Titanite (twins) (classic material)

Item Description

It's difficult to find Titanite specimens from this well-known Russian locale on the market today. They were mined circa 1980s-1990s, and immediately disappeared from the market. Most of the Titanites you'll see from Dodo are often small, ranging between thumbnails to miniatures, but THIS piece is an impressive, robust, showy, three-dimensional full cabinet sized piece. It's loaded with excellent, razor-sharp, highly lustrous, peachy-brown colored thin "wedge"-shaped crystal of Titanite that have formed beautiful twinned groups measuring up to 1.6 cm, sitting on a schist-like grey matrix. Many of the specimens you'll find from this locality can have a fair amount of damage, but this piece is in excellent condition, and while not completely damage-free, it's still much better than the majority you'll find by comparison. As mentioned before, you just don't see full-sized cabinet display pieces of this material especially with so many excellent free-standing twins like this. The crystals show a bit of translucency when backlit, so they're not opaque. These specimens from the Dodo Mine are actually "Alpine-Type", but I would make the case that this piece is more impressive than most Titanites I've seen from the European Alps, as it has so many crystals on such a big piece of matrix. A piece like this would be a huge prize for any strahler if it was found in Austria or Switzerland, and I think it's notably striking and majestic. This piece is from the collection of Richard ("Rich") Kosnar, the famed mineral dealer and collector from Colorado (1946-2007), and the namesake for the rare zirconium phosphate, Kosnarite. Rich built a very fine suite of Russian "Alpine-Type" minerals in the 1990s when they were finding their way to the western market, and this is one of the last remaining pieces from that suite. Valued at $4,000 for the impressive size, quality and wonderful aesthetics.