Stilbite - rare French locale

Item Description

Nice cluster of Stilbite, a well-known member of the Zeolite Group, from what SEEMS to be the classic alpine location famous for axinite: Le Bourg-d'Oisans, Grenoble, Isère, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France. See a dead ringer here on MINDAT: https://www.mindat.org/photo-615054.html. These bone-white crystals range up to 4 mm, with very good luster. The habits range from the classic bowties to a more blocky (terminations of bowties, perhaps?) expression. They richly cover one face of the matrix, and this small cabinet piece has a good overall aesthetic. These pieces are part of a century-old Italian collection that was recently acquired. Its historic nature, aside from the sheer age of the specimens, is reflected in how dramatically geopolitical borders have changed since these labels were created. We could not decipher the specimen label to make sense of the location Allemonte, but the piece looks like reported material from Isere as indicated. Unusual!