Quartz var: Amethyst ''flower''

Item Description

A beautiful classic, radial "flower" of Amethyst from Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. The color ranges from a soft lilac hue to a much more saturated purple color on the end. The piece was "popped" off the underlying matrix, as a bit of the attached copper-bearing rock is still visible underneath. There are dozens of tightly intergrown crystals here, with delicate transitions of purple to white / colorless on the tips. The luster really stands out, and most of the crystals are actually very well-formed with fine terminations upon close inspection. These are some of the most eye-catching and iconic Amethyst specimens in the world, and every good Quartz collection needs one, no to mention every Brazilian suite or just general worldwide minerals.
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.