Elbaite

Item Description

This is a large, luscious, deep raspberry pink, "mushroom cap" Elbaite from the Palelni Mine in Burma. It comes from the notable and perhaps best of locality Burma collection of Bill Larson and was purchased on the ground in Burma back when these came out in the late 1990s. Rarely do we see these shapely "mushroom-style" Tourmalines from Burma of this size! The morphology of these is captivating and unique with their central, larger crystal with numerous, divergent, crystals tightly packed in parallel growth against the main one. There is an ethereal translucency to the raspberry pink exterior skin and a darker ghostly interior can be seen for added intrigue and aesthetics. Looking down the c-axis, a faint triangular shape is evident, also unique to these. It has an overall satin luster with the thin, parallel, component prisms having a higher luster resulting in a fan-like scintillation of sparkles along the length of the crystal. It's also lightly speckled with tiny Muscovite crystals too. Super unique and attractive - better in person as these subtle features are hard to convey! It is quite likely this piece has never been cleaned, and perhaps more of them from this old find (1990s) had such surface features, that were lost in some cleaning and preparation techniques. For more information on the amazing Larson Burma collection, built over 40 years of going to Burma, see our other website at: https://www.irocks.com/burma-and-spinels-in-my-collection. This complete crystal with excellent color and rare style is a substantial 89 grams. Valued $4000. Burma is obviously closed to exports but even aside from that, they don't find more there of this style in modern times - these are 20 years or more out of the ground, only preserved in collections now.