Titanite

Item Description

Please note: This specimen is listed as coming from Fibbia (La Fibbia), a famous mountain above the Gotthard Pass in the Swiss Alps, but according to the entry on mindat.org, Titanite has not been reported from there. With that said, we're leaving Fibbia as the locality for the purpose of this listing in the hopes that an Alpine mineral expert might be able to give us a better locality. It's very possible that the piece is from the Central St Gotthard Massif, just not from Fibbia specifically. This cabinet sized specimen host several brownish-pink colored, "wedge"-shaped bladed crystals of Titanite measuring up to 1.2 cm long, sitting on granite matrix. The crystals are sharp and well-formed with good luster and decent gemminess in areas. There are some contacted areas, so not every crystal is pristine, but you don't see too many Titanite (also referred to as Sphene in older literature) pieces of this size from Switzerland on the market. Certain Austrian Alpine localities can produce larger sized specimens, but they're rare from Switzerland in my experience.
From the collection of Kurt Hefendehl (#12 CH), a well-known German collector all over Europe with worldwide contacts to dealers and collectors. He started collecting seriously at the age of 14 and his great and varied worldwide collection reached over 6000 pieces. He was very active mineralogically until shortly before his passing in 2020 at the age of 82. Considering his collection had a large number of pieces, it still had an unusually high standard of quality from most worldwide localities. He particularly specialized in all classics as well as minerals of the Black Forest, where he spent much time collecting. His Black Forest and German subcollections went to his good friend Wolfgang Wendel. We at The Arkenstone have the privilege of offering the remainder of this great worldwide collection over the next two to three years through our various platforms.