Smoky Quartz (rare locality)

Item Description

This specimen is labeled as coming from a "Schäferei" (sheep farm) in Bad Brambach. The listed localities on mindat.org for Bad Brambach mentions roadcuts along the B92, so my guess is that this piece is was collected at one of those locations. We've never had a piece of this material to offer in the auctions, and I can only find few similar specimens posted on mindat, so they must be fairly uncommon. This small cabinet specimen hosts fine quality, sharp, lustrous, well-formed, prismatic hexagonal crystals of Quartz which range from lovely smoky hues near the terminations to nearly white/colorless at the base, measuring up to 2.6 cm, sitting on an oxidized iron matrix. Most of the crystals are in excellent condition, but the periphery has some broken crystals where the piece was removed from the pocket wall. Overall it's a very showy example, and compares quite favorably to others I found online for comparison.
From the collection of Kurt Hefendehl (#338 D), a well-known German collector all over Europe with worldwide contacts to dealers and collectors. He started collecting seriously at the age of 14 and his great and varied worldwide collection reached over 6000 pieces. He was very active mineralogically until shortly before his passing in 2020 at the age of 82. Considering his collection had a large number of pieces, it still had an unusually high standard of quality from most worldwide localities. He particularly specialized in all classics as well as minerals of the Black Forest, where he spent much time collecting. His Black Forest and German subcollections went to his good friend Wolfgang Wendel. We at The Arkenstone have the privilege of offering the remainder of this great worldwide collection for the foreseeable future through our various platforms.