Tourmaline (interesting colors)

Item Description

Tourmaline is one of the most popular minerals among collectors for the fact that it's not only colorful, but it's one of the few minerals that occurs in virtually every color you can think of, and often forms in naturally multi-colored crystals. This piece comes from Sao Jose da Safira, and has a unique / distinctive coloring. On the surface, the piece looks black, but with backlighting it reveals an interesting and certainly singular almost metallic, steel-blue color throughout the prisms, while the terminations, have a contrasting vivid yellow-green hue. I can't remember seeing a piece quite like this before, as this particular shade of blue really stands out from virtually every other Tourmaline I've seen from Brazil. The piece has notably high luster on all sides, including the terminations, and the only damage I can see is on the base of the piece were it was separated from the pocket wall. A very cool, and just plain "different" Tourmaline crystal from the country that has arguably produced the finest Tourmaline crystals ever found. Specimen weight is 6.8 grams.
Ex Dr. Stephen Smale Collection. Along with amassing one of the finest private mineral collections in the world, Steve is a renowned mathematician. His accomplishments include being awarded the Fields Medal in 1966 along with being the awarded the Wolf Prize in mathematics in 2007. You can read Steve's bio on the Mineralogical Record website ( https://mineralogicalrecord.com/biographies_labels/smalestephen/ ) or on Wikipedia.