Dravite Tourmaline

Item Description

Dravite is an uncommon Tourmaline species, typically showing golden to bronze/brown hues. This particular specimen is from the Jajarkot District of Nepal and features a few sharp, lustrous, prismatic trigonal prisms with well-formed faces and attractive pyramidal terminations. The vast majority of the pieces I've seen from this locality are single crystals, so to have a piece with multiple crystals on the same specimen is rare and significant. With strong backlighting, you can see pockets of internal gemminess with a pleasing golden-yellow hue. The piece is not damage-free, as there some areas of damage, but it's still in pretty good shape overall.
This piece is from the collection of William ("Bill") Pinch (August 15, 1940 - April 1, 2017) of Rochester, New York. Bill was one of the most knowledgeable and accomplished mineral collectors / amateur mineralogists of the 20th century, and he was the namesake for the rare mercury oxyhalide species, Pinchite. The prestigious Pinch medal, which is typically awarded at the Tucson Gem And Mineral Show by the Mineralogical Association of Canada is also named in his honor. You can read his bio at the following link ( http://www.williampinch.com/about ).