Fluorite (''phantom'' color zoned crystals) on Quartz

Item Description

A beautiful display specimen from the La Barre Mine in France. Mindat.org refers to this locality as an ancient Fluorite mine, which operated, "from 1918 until 1948, produced 80 000 tons of ore". This is piece features many sharp, very lustrous, GEMMY< well-formed, textbook cubes with gorgeous blue color in the center and wonderful colorless "phantoms" on the edges of the crystals sitting on sparkling white Quartz matrix. There are a few spots that show golde/brown hues internally, due to what could be some kind of iron inclusions underneath the Fluorites. The largest crystal measures 1.3 cm on edge. Most of the crystals are in superb condition, but there are some tiny imperfections in sptos. The crystals show a bit of a color change, where they are a lighter purplish-blue color in halogen lighting, and a more saturated blue in sunlight. If you look at the underside of the specimen, you'll see that the Fluorites grew on a previous generation of Fluorite with more saturated green purple hues!
From the collection of the long time, beloved, well-known French field collector, Paul Zerfass (Collection #72). Zerfass built this worldwide collection over nearly 50 years, many of which were personally collected. A biography featuring specimens from his collection (along with his face on the cover) is in the May - June 2017 issue of French mineral magazine, Le Règne Minéral. We have a .pdf copy of the article for anybody interested in reading it (though it's mostly in French). Just drop us a line and know that you'd like to have a copy.