Description
The iron mines of Rio Marina on the Tuscan Island of Elba, worked by the Etruscans ca. 600 B.C., set the standards for great Hematite and Pyrite specimens for centuries, before the Peruvian mines started to provide excellent material as well. Countless superb specimens have found their way into most of the world´s major collections, and the present piece may not be a museum specimen, but nonetheless, we are looking at a very aesthetic and unusual piece. A group of very precisely crystallized, sharp, and brass-colored high-gloss Pyritohedrons, with the main crystal being somewhat unusually distorted that gives it a slightly scalenodral habit, is perched on a pyrite-rich matrix. The matrix is covered with tabular, black Hematite crystals. A great piece from a classic Italian locality.