Spessartine Garnet on Microcline

Item Description

Highly lustrous and translucent, rich orange-red colored Spessartine crystals cover much of this specimen from the Tongbei Garnet locality. It is a great miniature recovered from cavities in this small granitic deposit and this particular piece shows the Spessartine Garnets covering two ivory colored Feldspar crystals. The gemmy nature of the crystals set on the light colored Feldspar really makes these crystal "pop" on this alluring miniature. These splendid Garnets are a gemmy to translucent orange-red and range in size from 3 mm to 1 cm and are dominated by the trapezohedral form. This great locality has produced some very fine Spessartine specimens for a while, but are now few and far between. New localities to the north produce some similar material, but this is the classic old color and style.