ELBAITE ON STILBITE

ABOUT THE SPECIMEN Tourmaline and stilbite make for an uncommon combination, and this piece makes for a great looking example! A richly colored crystal of rubellite measuring to cm is contrasted with a backdrop of tan stilbite crystals, with some white albite and purple sheeted crystals of the polylithionite-trilithionite series (formerly referred to as lepidolite). One end of the tourmaline has a pinacoidal termination, with the other being heavily etched into a more pointed appearance, and the whole specimen displays elegantly.   VIDEO   MORE INFO First commercially worked in 1898, the Himalaya Mine intrudes the Peninsular Ranges batholith as a northwest-trending pegmatite dike emplaced approximately 99-90 Ma during Cretaceous subduction of the Farallon plate beneath North America. Elbaite occurs in spectacular watermelon zoning - pink rubellite cores from manganese grading to blue-green terminations from iron and copper substitution - alongside bicolor crystals reaching 5-7 cm. The celebrated 1989 pocket discovered by Bill Larson yielded exceptional doubly-terminated floaters showing intense color gradations. Stilbite forms cream to white "wheat sheaf" sprays up to 3 cm, characteristically perched on tourmaline terminations or quartz matrix. What distinguishes Himalaya specimens is the aesthetic combination of these two minerals - the calcium zeolite growing on lithium-rich pocket-zone elbaite creates striking textural contrasts. The pegmatite crystallized from water-rich residual melts during extreme fractional crystallization, with lithium, boron, and volatile enrichment driving gem pocket formation. The mine remains active with fee-dig operations, continuing over 125 years of specimen production.