Crocoite (unusual crystal style)

Item Description

Crystals of this robust style are rarely seen from Australia but this does have a unique style of sharp and unusual crocoite crystals on a large, display quality cabinet piece! Superb crocoite from Australia has been found only in several locations although in many finds since the 1800s at them. Of the several thousand (or more) specimens found, almost all are the normal bladed, thin, elegant style of elongated crystals. Only in a few small pockets were sharp, robust, 3-dimensional crystals found, as you see here. This style is often called dipyramidal, although that form is hard to visualize here ( more obvious in small crystals from an old Russian find than it is here). To us, they look stretched, elongated, and more like vanadinite, than a crocoite or a wulfenite. Similar examples of this crystal style actually occured in crocoite from Berezovsk in Russia , over 100 years ago - in any case, it is rare for a lead species and because of the combination of color and style, this is a confusing specimen that at first is hard to pin down at first glance. These crystals average 1 cm although some are larger. It is not pristine overall, but it does have plenty of fine, intact crystals, and it is a shocking mix of shape and color. An important older specimen said to have come through Adam Wright, from an old Tasmanian collection.  Long before the profusion of specimens from from Tasmania, a venerable old mine in Russia was the type locality for crocoite, prior to 1811, when a fine specimen appeared in Sowerby's "Exotic Mineralogy." They had distinct habits, similar to what we see here.