Quartz (''Needle Quartz'')

Item Description

A beautiful cabinet sized specimen of what is referred to in German as "Nadelquarz" (Needle Quartz). Even Kurt's catalogue entry for this specimen refers to it as "Nadelquarz". The piece is filled with dozens of sharp, lustrous, colorless, GEM QUALITY, hexagonal prisms measuring up to 4.7 cm long on a layer of massive Quartz and host rock matrix. The Da Paccio Quarry in Switzerland only produces Quartz specimens, no other associated minerals have been reported, and they are every bit of the high quality examples that you would expect from a Swiss Quartz specimen in terms of excellent quality and form. It should be noted that there are some broken crystals on this piece, so it's not pristine, but it's still one of the best examples we've seen from the locality for size and presentation. For you morphology enthusiasts, there are several crystals on this piece that show the classic Dauphiné habit for which the quarry is known to produce. From the collection of Kurt Hefendehl (#2 CH), a well-known German collector all over Europe with worldwide contacts to dealers and collectors. He started collecting seriously at the age of 14 and his great and varied worldwide collection reached over 6000 pieces. He was very active mineralogically until shortly before his passing in 2020 at the age of 82. Considering his collection had a large number of pieces, it still had an unusually high standard of quality from most worldwide localities. He particularly specialized in all classics as well as minerals of the Black Forest, where he spent much time collecting. His Black Forest and German subcollections went to his good friend Wolfgang Wendel. We at The Arkenstone have the privilege of offering the remainder of this great worldwide collection over the next two to three years through our various platforms.