Quartz (unusual habit) on Carlsbad Twinned Microcline

Item Description

A very interesting and unusual Quartz specimen from Brazil featuring a 7.7 cm crystal with what I would best describe as a "Ticino" or "Tessin" habit, but it's notably compressed one direction, so it's not equant all the way around. The upper portion is tapered with the way one would expect from a "Ticino" habit Quartz, but it also tapers back down the lower portion as well, almost in the shape of an elongated diamond. The crystal itself is very gemmy, bordering on water-clear clarity, with a very slight smoky hue, and there are a few additional Quartz crystals, near the base which have more traditional habits. To top it off, the matrix for the Quartz is a rather etched, beige colored Carlsbad-twinned Microcline crystal. Even with the etching, you can clearly see the twinning plane of the two Microcline crystals, which is a stark contrast to the well-formed, smooth faces of the Quartz. A very strange and arguably unique Quartz specimen that would make a fine addition to any Quartz suite, a pegmatite collection or a collection of crystals with interesting / unusual morphologies.
From the collection of Armon McPherson, a retired physicist, now living in New Mexico. Armon received his PhD from North Carolina State University in 1985, and worked at the laser laboratory at the University of Illinois at Circle Center. In the summer of 1997, Armon moved to the Argonne National Laboratory where he worked at the Advanced Photon Source, then the world’s largest synchrotron facility dedicated as an x-ray source. In 2001, he was asked to join a team at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque to conduct laser research for DARPA. Finally, staying within Sandia, he transferred to the Z Facility, the world’s most powerful x-ray facility. He retired in the spring of 2017. Armon's introduction to mineral collecting came in the 1980s during graduate school when he attended his first mineral show. He took up the hobby of faceting gems, and focused his early collection on gem crystals, and later transitioned into collecting non-gem species. We are proud to offer specimens from his worldwide mineral collection here for you.