Liroconite

Item Description

This is a single textbook, perfect crystal of this unbelievably rare English classic, with exceptional luster and incredible blue color saturation. It would have been found in the mid 1800s, when all good English liroconite was found, and has therefore been through multiple hands since. Although not a large thumbnail, it is nevertheless so perfect, so colorful, that it stayed in the Schauss collection because of that perfection alone. Formally it was the “crown jewel” in Ron Petrelli’s collection of over 8,000 thumbnails. The color is striking! This is one of the few specimens in the collection that is small compared to other thumbnails here, but it leaps out to the eye. Single perfect crystals of this size, are rare on earth, and will only get more uncommon in time as they disappear into new collections or museums. Jeff Scovil photo, and published in Mineralogical Record, Refined Elegance: The Small Treasures of Mineralogy, November 2022.