Microlite Group

Item Description

This is an attractive small cabinet piece featuring a RICH coverage of Microlite from a find in 1980s. The piece is loaded with hundreds if not thousands of tiny (it's called Microlite for a reason) gemmy to translucent, rich golden-orange colored crystals measuring up to 3 mm which are coating nearly all sides of the piece. If you look along the side, you can see a bit of a stepped / layered formation of the matrix. Although the crystals are small, you can still see well-defined octahedral and dodecahedral crystal faces. Upon close inspection I can see a few gemmy bladed crystals of Albite, and some attractive acicular white colored "sprays" of an unknown mineral (possibly Bertrandite?). A wonderful old time specimen from the famous Ipê mine in Brazil. Despite their size, the finest examples from this mine are some of the finest quality Microlite crystals out there. If nothing else, this is a nice micro specimen for anybody interested in a piece of one of the less common gem mineral oxide species out there. I have to say that this piece is labeled as Microlite Group because the species Microlite is no longer valid.