Dravite Tourmaline

Item Description

A highly unusual crystal for dravite, with intense color, that is lustrous and transparent gemmy green, capped at the top in white, trigonal termination that highlights the green color below. The white, achroite zone, is extremely rare and really shocking to see so well defined, like a snow cap. From a small pocket obtained by Mike Keim in 2014, who described it to Alex at the time they came out as one of the finest thumbnails of the lot: “Transparent, multicolored Dravite crystal with a sharp change to white, satiny cat’s-eye at the termination. There were only a handful of these small crystals that went to cats-eye and also retained the original trigonal pyramidal termination.” Photos: Bruce Cairncross’ important book, Minerals & Gemstones of East Africa (2020), page 111 (Scovil photo, also shown here). Also, published (as a full page vertical!) in Mineralogical Record, Refined Elegance: The Small Treasures of Mineralogy, November 2022.