Gemmy bi-colored Tourmaline (old) ex Kay Robertson Coll.

Item Description

A SURPRISING old tourmaline from Minas Gerais. At first glance, this lustrous, well-striated trigonal crystals looks like a schorl. BUT, closer examination with different lighting reveals this to be a striking, beautiful, gemmy, bi-colored colored crystal! The interesting, highly lustrous, mostly opaque, modified pyramidal termination is either black schorl or very dark green tourmaline. Most of the body is gemmy, layered rich bottle-green. The base is the REAL surprise. It is a 1.5 cm, gorgeous, indicolite blue gem nodule! Complete all-around and pristine. Ex Kay Robertson Collection # 7726 and acquired from the Sol and Lee (son) Shale Collections in October, 1975. Kay is a prominent California collector, who specialized in European classics (see the article in the March-April, 2007 Mineralogical Record). 86 grams mass. OLD, rare style tourmaline, possibly from the famous Barra do Salinas Distrist.