Apophyllite (rare habit) on Stilbite (Belsky Coll.)

Item Description

An elegant, aesthetic and very uncommon specimen from the famed quarries at Poona, India. Interestingly, despite the flood of them we see today, this is a style from EARLY production in the early 1980s, that is NOT seen in finds from here, today. Narrow elongated, scalenohedral apophyllite crystals are rare from any Indian locality. Diverging sprays of glassy, pretty light mint-green, apophyllite crystals are pleasing set on matrix of starkly contrasting, snow-white, bladed stilbite. For such dense coverage, this piece is remarkably nearly damage-free, with only a few broken crystals around the periphery. For the locality, this can definitely be considered very rare, old-time material. Ex Howard Belsky Collection. Howard started as a mineral dealer at age 13 in 1972, became a sophisticated dealer and died tragically at age 28 in 1987. His collection recently became available to us through his family.