Tourmaline (gemmy "floater" w/ cats eye effect) (ex Rolando Gioia Collection)

Item Description

At first glance, this crystal might not look very interesting, but when you backlight it, a completely different story is told. The piece is nearly black in reflected light, but the central portion shows a gorgeous greenish-blue color that glows even with moderate backlighting, although the terminations are dark, and virtually opaque. The entire surface is filled with deep, striated, prismatic etching patterns, yet the piece still retains good luster on the surface. It's a complete doubly-terminated "floater", as it's crystallized all the way around with no point of attachment. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, this crystal actually shows a beautiful chatoyant cats eye effect when rotated in the light, which is quite difficult to illustrate in the photos, but can easily be seen in person. A really cool and unusual Tourmaline crystal that would make a fine addition to any gem crystal suite or a collection of Tourmalines or Brazilian minerals. Specimen weight is 12.18 grams. From the collection of Rolando Gioia (a contributor to new definitive book on Brazilian minerals: "Minerais e Pedras Preciosas do Brasil").