Azurite, Liufengshan Mine, Guichi District, Chizhou, Anhui, China
An eye-catching, sizable cabinet piece showcasing lustrous, teal-to electric-blue azurite crystals with accents of banded to acicular, Kelly-green malachite. The crystals really pop in direct lighting, with true, some presenting electric blue translucency. High-resolution macrophotography reveals partial pseudomorphosis to gemmy malachite. The form and color associations of this cabinet piece are, frankly, superb. 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, this locality is said to have been closed. Self-standing, mounted on a clear acrylic base.
Dimensions: 85 x 80 x 50 mm. Weight 387 g (13.6 oz.) Please note that the scale of the precision macrophotography is on the scale of <1 mm.
* 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.
