Fluorescent Mineral Display at the Dallas Gem and Mineral Society Annual Show on November 17th & 18th, 2018. Picture 1 shows both long and short wave minerals with long wave on the left, short wave on the right. Picture 2 shows the display under white light. It’s four feet wide and two feet tall.
Originally brought out of Brazil in the 1930’s, and long in the collection of a famous gem cutting family from Idar Oberstein in Germany, it was left uncleaned for nearly 80 years before being recently prepared and sold. The stone hasn’t been heated either, to produce the slightly bland blue almost ubiquitous in commercial aqua today, but left in its original state, with the beautiful green-blue hue that originated the name aquamarine. The inclusions within that give it its name are phantom crystal surfaces, where growth stopped, and then resumed in the slowly crystallising pegmatitic mush in which it was born. The crystal weighs over 7kg, measures 24.5×12.6×9.3 cm and is currently on loan to the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas. It is considered one of the planet’s great gems.
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