Home > African Minerals – March 29 > MS0667 Wesselsite, Sugilite

Wesselsite, Sugilite - Sold


Giester and Rieck (1996) named wesselsite in honor of the Wessels mine, which the type and currently only reported locality. Wesselsite has an unusual but simple formula: SrCuSi4O10. Material scientists have studied the synthetic compound, discovering unusual thermal expansion properties, and its especially intense coloring ability. The mineral occurs in very limited quantities in a manganese and lithium rich skarn, most known specimens dating to the 1990s. In 2011, another find of wesselsite stunned the mineral collecting community with its large cleavage size, and also by yielding three minerals new to science.

This wesselsite specimen shows a large (extremely large) cobalt-blue platy cleavage, 1.9 by 1.7 cm across, in rich royal purple sugilite. The colors are intense and contrast is striking. A top quality specimen.