Rutile starburst twin in Smoky Quartz ex Halpern Collection (NOT polished!)

Item Description

If you could create golden starburst and freeze it in time, you could hardly do better than this fantastic, 8 cm Smoky Quartz crystal included by Rutile, literally frozen in the quartz since it formed hundreds of millions of years ago. From the front or the sides, you can easily see the delicate, golden needles of Rutile making their way throughout the gemmy crystal. These brilliant, golden needles reach up to 3.9 cm, and the primary, twinned Rutiles of the star pattern are perfectly preserved. Gorgeous, and absolutely classic for Brazil, this was out of the great find in 2003. Originally priced at $3500 on previous label, for a reason - it is even better in person than a flat photo can show you. Looking at the price label from previous dealer, I now realize Jack bought it DIRECTLY from Brian Cook, who is the source in Brazil. He does not own the mine (actually a group of diverse nearby deposits), but he certainly controls and handled a lot of the good material from the regional deposits over the years for the local villages as a trusted intermediary, largely including for lapidary material which finances the specimen mining. Brian was a speaker at one of our Dallas Symposia, in 2019. His excellent talk on this location can be found here: https://vimeo.com/showcase/664. Brian's label specifies this was from a 2003 find at Remedios Farm, Serra da Mangabeira, which is more detail than I have ever seen on such a specimen! NOTE ADDED: THIS IS NATURAL AND NOT POLISHED. IT WAS CLEANED ONLY WITH WATER, NOT WITH ANY OTHER LAB TECHNIQUES OR POLISHING, as is too often done with this material. In person, small surface features are present that easily validate we are looking at natural surfaces, natural beauty without polishing, and that is part of what makes this so remarkable. There are numerous references to Jack and his collection in print, but perhaps a good tour of the collection and its history will help give perspective on just how good, and important, this collection is: https://www.irocks.com/the-jac...