Spessartine Garnet on Smoky Quartz (ex Brian Kosnar Collection)

Item Description

These gorgeous Spessartines are some of the most attractive and highly displayable pieces to come out in China in the last 20 years. This is a fine quality small cabinet specimen featuring superb, sharp, gemmy, lustrous, rich orange-red colored crystals of Spessartine Garnet measuring up to 9 mm which are sitting on prismatic, hexagonal Smoky Quartz crystals and minor Feldpsar matrix. The Garnets show excellent trapezohedral faces, some of which have tiny diamond-shaped dodecahedral modification, and the are notably larger than most Spessartines you'll see from this locality. The piece is in very good condition with minimal damage. One of the Smoky Quartz crystals is contacted, but outside of that, it's in fine shape, save the periphery where the piece was removed from the pocket, though it has been expertly trimmed. I love the fact that the Garnets are brilliant, sharp and smooth - no pitting or dull faces anywhere. Garnet is a well known mineral, but you have to keep in mind that it's quite rare to find brilliant orange Spessartines from any locality in the world, let alone on good sized crystals on matrix like this. Retail value on this one is $4,500. From the collection of Brian Kosnar.