Gypsum (large & rare locality! ) ex Jack Halpern

Item Description

When Jack Halpern first started collecting in the 1960s, he felt an immediate attraction to both color and geometrym which this piece exemplifies with its 3-dimensional shape and high quality for a 'desert rose' as they are known. These form in certain environments where the gypsum rapidly crystallizes in the presence of sand, and includes the sand as it grows. This is a HUGE example of the habit, and it is remarkably quite complete, all around 360 degrees. It is large and masses in at just over a kilo! To Jack, as he would say, there is no bad color and no ugly mineral if the shape was pleasing. And, he loved this large gypsum rose, and had it proudly displayed for 40-plus years on one of his top shelves where large, geometric pieces could be seen while standing below, just above head level. As he was already drawn to flowers and orchid collecting and breeding, minerals with shapes like flowers or organic forms attracted him heavily. This is a specimen #612 in the collection and acquired in the early 1970s (in the end, Jack has owned over 5000 specimens although some are catalogued using old numbers for pieces traded out, but early numbers are still early numbers and long ago!). Note that this is not fro mthe common locality today, in Oklahoma, for similar (smaller) formations; but rather from an older locality from which I had never seen anything of this magnitude, up in Utah.