Azurite, Liufengshan Mine, Guichi District, Chizhou, Anhui, China
A pocket of beautifully crystallized, lustrous, textbook blue azurite rosettes graced with accents of chatoyant, acicular, Kelly-green malachite. Some crystals are gemmy near the edges when backlit. The form and color associations of this cabinet piece are very appealing. The subject of a professional paper in 1991*, the Liufengshan deposit is an unusual leaching-accumulation type copper-iron deposit, hosted in Quaternary gravels that are deposited in erosion caves of Carboniferous limestones. The crystallization is reminiscent of the famous La Sal azurite locality in Utah. According to write-ups in Mindat, his locality is said to have been closed.
Dimensions: 60 x 60 x 20 mm. Self standing, mounted on a clear acrylic base.
* As referenced in Mindat: Zhilin Chen and Jun Lu (1991): A new type of copper deposit in Anhui Province - geology and genesis of the Liufengshan copper deposit. Geology and Prospecting 27(11), 19-22.
