Schorl Tourmaline in Biotite (ex Kay Robertson Collection)

Item Description

A rarely seen example of Tourmaline from Pizzo Forno featuring sharp, lustrous, prismatic, jet-black Schorl crystals measuring up to 1.5 cm in semi-metallic dark bronze-black mica (originally labeled as Bitotite) matrix. One of the Schorls shows a nice trigonal termination, but the other are contacted, so the piece is more of a reference specimen. If you collect Tourmalines, this is a very hard to find piece from this well-known Alpine locality in Switzerland. Ex Kay Robertson Collection (#11290). 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).