Turquoise (crystallized!) (classic material)

Item Description

When people think of Turquoise, it's usually in the form of polished examples from the American Southwest, but experienced collectors know that the best CRYSTALLIZED examples are those from the Bishop Mine in Virginia. This large miniature / small cabinet piece features attractive, glowing blue colored Turquoise, triclinic bladed micro crystals on Quartz matrix. Lynch Station arguably produces the world's finest CRYSTALLIZED Turquoise, which is a great rarity in nature and occurs only at a VERY few localities worldwide. We have photographed the piece with a Canon MP-E 65mm to better illustrate the quality. It should be noted that this is chemically confirmed Turquoise, and not Planerite, as noted by Gene Foord in his 1998 paper stated, "Most samples of 'turquoise' are cation-deficient or are planerite". When it comes to minerals of Virginia, this is one of the first things that people think of, and they are true classics for the beauty and quality.
From the collection of Norman Kennedy ("Kenny") Gay (1953-2023), a geologist, geoscience educator and mineral collector from North Carolina. (#M105 A.22) Kenny worked for North Carolina Geological Survey starting 1995, and he was a member of the adjunct faculty at Wesleyan College, and a professor of geology since 2001. He assembled a large collection of worldwide minerals specimens, though he focused mainly on minerals of North Carolina. Kenny did substantial work documenting all of the significant mineral occurrences and mining/mineral collecting in North Carolina. He might be best associated with the Redmond Mine, where the rare extremely rare lead sulfate Kennygayite was discovered and named in his honor in 2022. Kenny was the first person to collect specimens at this locality, which lead Jason Smith to take an interest in this assemblage, and later name a mineral in Kenny's honor.