An extremely rich but very small polished tumble of very rare Sugilite. The stone is almost pure purple "gel" Sugilite with some lovely patterning. There is also some equally rare brown Bustamite in the stone and the faintest trace of blue Richterite. The grey that is visible in places is Chalcedony although the Sugilite in this stone is also associated microscopically with Manganese. A great little stone that does not need bright sunlight to bring out the purple colour.
Like all our listings you are buying the exact stone shown in the photos.
It is from the Wessels Mine, Northern Cape, South Africa.
It measures 17x10x3mm and weighs 3.6 Carats (0.73g)
Sugilite remains an extremely expensive and hard to get mineral especially with a lot of good colour. Most of what we do get has only trace amounts of purple.
Sugilite is a rare mineral found only at the type locality in Japan (Iwagi Islet), in Madhya Pradesh in India and at the Wessels mine in South Africa. Only the Wessels material has the famous purple colour due to its manganese content. Interestingly the Wessels Sugilite is not a single crystal gem but rather is both polycrystalline and polymineralic. That is to say it consists of an aggregate of both grains of Sugilite and other minerals in association, all intimately intergrown on a microscopic scale. This is important as those other minerals affect both how the Sugilite looks and how it can be used. Whilst they all contain the grains of Manganoan Sugilite they can also contain Quartz (Chalcedony), Braunite, Andradite, Wollastonite, Pectolite, Vesuvianite, Glaucochroite or Aegerine. It is impossible to differentiate these merely by eye and the name Sugilite is given to all of these combinations as they all contain Sugilite and they are all found in the same deposits. It does however explain the variety of shades of colour as to some extent it reflects the proportion of the Manganoan Sugilite element - and thus its purity. Generally the more Manganoan Sugilite there is, the darker and more saturated the purple colour. The polycrystalline nature of Sugilite also explains some of the varying textures you see the material. Veined, mottled, banded and even orbicular patterns can be seen and often add to Sugilites highly prized nature especially when cut into jewellery stones.
ORDERING INFORMATION:
Shipping:
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