Quartz "Rheinkiesel" (rhine pebbles) (ex Kay Robertson Collection)

Item Description

A pair of river worn Quartz pebbles from a small hamlet called Maxau along the Rhine River in Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany. The label refers to these piece as "Rock Crystal" and "Rheinkiesel", which loosely translated means "Rhein pebble" or "pebbles from the Rhein River". They are obviously rounded from their time traveling the river and rolling around with other pebbles for hundreds or even thousands of years. One piece is complete all the way around while the smaller of the two is a partial pebble. Each of them have a gentle smoky color. Who knows how far up the river these Quartzes originated, as the Rhein begins in the Swiss Alps (in the state of Graubunden), so these could be piece of Smoky Quartz from Switzerland that managed to work they way down to Germany. Ex Kay Robertson Collection (#3544 a & b). Kay is a prominent California collector, who specialized in European classics (see the article in the March-April, 2007 Mineralogical Record and the 50+ page article in the German Magazine "Mineralien Welt" November-December 2017).