Spessartine Garnet (ex Francesco Bedogne Collection)

Item Description

A classic and hard to find display specimen of the beautiful Spessartine Garnets from the lesser known Escondido Pegmatite on the eastern edge of Minas Gerais near the border with Espirito Santo. Dozens of incredibly sharp, highly lustrous GEM quality to translucent dodecahedral crystals of rich orange colored Spessartine are scattered all over the silvery layered Muscovite matrix and associated with white Albite blades. The largest Spessartine measures 6 mm across, and while it's a bit distorted, nearly every other Spessartine is textbook and pristine. GORGEOUS material, and very hard to find on the market. Great aesthetics and quality and certainly from older material a few decades ago. Valued at $500. From the worldwide collection of famed Italian mineral collector, field collector and author, Francesco Bedogne of Sondrio, Italy (Collection #1705). Bedogne wrote dozens of articles and several books about the mineralogy of Italian Alpine localities such as Val Bregaglia, Val Masino, Val Codera, Val Spluga, Valtellina and the famous Val Malenco. He was also the founder of the Valtellinese Mineralogical Institute.