Elestial Quartz
Description
Quartz – silicon dioxide – is the commonest and most widely occurring mineral, constituting some 12% of the earth’s crust. Its purest crystalline form is transparent, and known as rock crystal, but the solutions from which quartz crystallises frequently contain traces of other minerals, as well as bubbles of gas and water, that cannot be fitted into the crystal matrix. Unlike the familiar, relatively clear hexagonal crystals, elestial quartzes appear complex and endlessly varied. Despite this variety, most examples on the market come from a single hill in the Minas Gerais area of Brazil – a region famous for its minerals and now pock-marked with thousands of small mines. Elestial quartzes are often, as with the example in which this image was found, filled with colourful clay particles: when I was sold this specimen it was described as looking ‘rather dirty, but with a lot going on’ – just how much was going on only became apparent on scanning it! I call it my ‘wild quartz’ and it remains for me one of the most staggering examples of just how much richness even inorganic nature can pack into a tiny space – the source is less than 2cm (3/4”) square.