Stibnite piercing through Baryte

Item Description

Here we have a beautiful and eye-catching specimen from Baia Sprie (formerly Felsőbánya in Hungarian), which was a prolific mining area in northern Romania that dates back to the 1300s, and only stopped mining in 2006 according to the entry on mindat.org. Specimens from this area found their way into private collections and museums around the world for centuries. This piece is a wonderful, historic example of the famous Barytes from Baia Sprie, which are quite varied in their styles/habits and colors, but this one has the distinction of playing host to dark silvery grey prismatic crystals of Stibnite which are not just included in, or growing on the Baryte, but truly piercing through the thick, lustrous, soft golden colored tabular blade. The largest Stibnite measures 1.5 cm. I can't recall seeing a piece like this where the Stibnite crystals are almost erupting out of the Baryte. The piece is not completely damage-free, but still in fine condition for the size and the age, and could well be over 100 years old.
This specimen was riginally was part of the Grace Dearborn collection, then donated to Harvard University (the label with #92194 is directly out of Harvard's collection), and then sold by dealer Phil Scalisi.