Minas Gerais Brazilian Quartz

Origination: Brazil
Approximate: Height - 33" - Width - 16" - Depth - 14"
Minas Gerais Brazilian Quartz: $18,000.00 U.S.D.
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Very large museum-quality specimen from Minas Gerais. Brazilian, highly pointed terminated quartz with visible white, smoky and a bit of violet color combinations.

Quartz has been known and appreciated since pre-historic times. The most ancient name known is recorded by Theophrastus in about 300-325 BCE, κρύσταλλος or kristallos. The varietal names, rock crystal and bergcrystal, preserve the ancient usage. The root words κρύοσ signifying ice cold and στέλλειυ to contract (or solidify) suggest the ancient belief that kritallos was permanently solidified iceThe earliest printed use of "quertz" was anonymously published in 1505, but attributed to a physician in Freiberg. Germany, Ulrich Rühlein von Kalbe. By 1530, Agricola used the spelling "quartz" as well as "quertze", but Agricola also referred to "crystallum", "silicum", "silex", and silice". Tomkeieff (1941) suggested an etymology for quartz: "The Saxon miners called large veins - Gänge, and the small cross veins or stringers - Querklüfte. The name ore (Erz, Ertz) was applied to the metallic minerals, the gangue or to the vein material as a whole. Minas Gerais is a state in Brazil and its name translated into English means General Mines. Many of the localities and photos here on Mindat are for specimens that have come from several rather distinct geological settings in the state. Probably the best known of these are the pegmatite minerals like tourmaline, beryl, quartz etc that come from the pegmatites in the north west granitic region of the state and whose center, business wise if not geologically is the town of Governador Valadares.

The name is obviously derived from its brown to gray color. Very dark smoky quartz is called Morion. In Scotland, smoky quartz from the Cairngorm mountain range in the Scottish Highlands was used in jewelry and the stones accordingly were called Cairngorms. Not all quartz that is brown, gray, or black is called smoky quartz (see "Specific Properties"). In jewelry, faceted smoky quartz used to be sold as "smoky topaz". I don't know if that is still common practice, but as far as I know the trader’s codex does not allow this anymore.


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