Spessartine Garnet with Smoky Quartz on Microcline

Item Description

The Wushan Mine will go down as one of the most iconic Chinese localities. It is also world-famous for producing top-tier Spessartine Garnets, often found on matrix, creating beautiful specimens. These are some of the most attractive and highly displayable pieces to come out in China in the last 20 years. They are truly iconic and genuinely some of the most beautiful matrix Garnets from anywhere. This is a fine quality small cabinet specimen featuring very sharp, gemmy, highly lustrous, rich orange colored crystals of Spessartine Garnet measuring up to 5 mm which are associated with GEMMY, prismatic, hexagonal crystals of Smoky Quartz sitting on beige colored Microcline matrix. The Garnets feature a combination of excellent dodecahedral and trapezohedral faces. The piece is in very good condition with no major damage that I can find. I love the fact that the Garnets are 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. The orange color is due to a higher manganese content (as opposed to iron) in these crystals.