Calcite with Palygorskite (''Mountain Leather'')

Item Description

A fairly hard to find specimen of Calcite from Metaline Falls, Washington, especially in a showy cabinet-sized example like this one. Several compressed trigonal crystals of light smoky colored Calcite measuring up to 6.4 cm across, are associated with tangled fibrous groups of Palygorskite, which was labeled as "Mountain Leather". Technically speaking Mountain Leather is an Amphibole species, and is actually part of a different mineral group than Palygorskite, but the name is often used for this material. Very showy, and great condition, only a small amount of roughness on the underside of the piece. PLEASE NOTE that the green spots on the back of the specimen are small amounts of styrofoam, presumably remaining from when the piece was glued to a styrofoam base. This is one of the best and largest examples of this material that we've had to offer in the auctions.
Ex George Loud Collection No. 0243; 14.1.1 WA.1. George (born August 16, 1942) is a well-known mineral collector from Washington, DC and South Carolina respectively, and was a patent lawyer by trade for over 50 years. He assembled one of the great mineral collections in the U.S., comprising worldwide specimens, and in later years he sold the worldwide specimens to focus on minerals of the United States, specifically locality suites with an emphasis on amazing representation of species while still maintaining fine quality. The specimens remarkably range from micros to all the way up to large cabinets in size. We recently acquired most of his impressive 9000+ piece collection, and the VAST majority of these pieces will be offered here in the auctions, as we feel that everyone deserves and equal opportunity at acquiring these important, well-documented and fine quality specimens for their collections.
See: https://mineralogicalrecord.com/biographies_labels/george-loud for more information