Baryte var: ''Baryte Rose''

Item Description

This piece is a fine quality and very good sized example of these elusive "Baryte Rose" specimens from Rockenberg. These pieces are quite reminiscent of famous red sandstone Baryte "roses" from Oklahoma, but this one has much finer detail. The piece is essentially a "floater", with only one contacted crystal than I can find, and the overall shape/form of the piece is very eye-catching. It's larger than most I've seen and it's still very well-formed with excellent detail. The color is a wonderful golden hue due to sand inclusions. Mindat.org states that analyses of Hofmann (1970) have shown the roses contain more quartz (sand)~ 50 % than baryte ~ 42 %. This Tertiary sandstone quarry is well-known for these beautiful sand-included Baryte "roses", but specimens are seldom available.
From the collection of Kurt Hefendehl (#203 D), a well-known German collector all over Europe with worldwide contacts to dealers and collectors. He started collecting seriously at the age of 14 and his great and varied worldwide collection reached over 6000 pieces. He was very active mineralogically until shortly before his passing in 2020 at the age of 82. Considering his collection had a large number of pieces, it still had an unusually high standard of quality from most worldwide localities. He particularly specialized in all classics as well as minerals of the Black Forest, where he spent much time collecting. His Black Forest and German subcollections went to his good friend Wolfgang Wendel. We at The Arkenstone have the privilege of offering the remainder of this great worldwide collection for the foreseeable future through our various platforms.