Talk:Spodumene

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Kunzite

Kunzite: a note of correction on the listing on kunzite for Wikipedia.

Pale pink kunzite was discovered in 1902 in the Pala District of San Diego County in California.

As a side note: In actual practice "discovering as in pick and shovel" Kunzite was dicovered by a miner and lapidarist in San Diego. The application of the name of Kunzite to the stone might be considered as an "honerariam" granted to Mr. Kuntz.

Just the notice of a error in fact (according to my humble knowledge). Also a question, where did Conneticut come into the picture.

If you would like a full blown reseach verification, I can do that, but it will be pretty boring. Really it was found here in San Diego.

Tommie Dillon San Diego

== On "Kunzite" from Connecticut ==

The statement appearing on the Spodumene page under the variety "kunzite" is incorrect:

"It was named after George Frederick Kunz, who discovered it in Connecticut, USA in 1902."

In 1876, Abijiha N. Fillow started a pegmatite mining operation in Branchville, Fairfield Co., Connecticut for the commercial recovery of muscovite mica. This operation was originally called the Fillow Quarry, but was later better known as the Branchville Mica mine or the Branchville Quarry. While the yield of muscovite mica was disappointing, Fillow’s exploratory work uncovered a pegmatitic rock ledge that contained an assortment of unusual phosphate minerals. Deciding to abandon the quarry as unprofitable, Fillow backfilled the excavation to a depth of six to eight feet. However, he preserved numerous samples of the unknown phosphates which he brought to the attention of mineralogist James Dwight Dana in 1877.

The specimens which Dana brought back to Yale excited considerable interest, and in 1878 an expedition under George J Brush and Edward Salisbury Dana went to Branchville and hired Fillow to reopen the excavation for scientific study. In addition to identifying the new mineral species eosphorite, triploidite, fairfieldite, fillowite, lithiophilite, reddingtonite and natrophilite, they discovered large crystals of spodumene embedded in the quartz of the pegmatite, some of which displayed a "rose-pink or amethystine-purple color"

“One of the finest crystals that we have thus far had, as imbedded in the quartz, a length of three feet and a thickness of two inches. The unaltered spodumene, of fine amethystine color, made up about one-fourth of the whole, extending rather regularly through the middle of the crystal. Unfortunately, the spodumene was much rifted and fractured, so that its former transparency had, for the most part, disappeared…In the better specimens the spodumene is perfectly transparent, sometimes colorless, and again of a beautiful rose-pink or amethystine-purple color.” (Brush and Dana, 1880)

(The property was purchased in 1880 by the Union Porcelain Works of Greenpoint, New York, and operated for feldspar and quartz. Mining for feldspar, quartz and mica continued intermittently on site until at least 1944.)

Brush and Dana did not call the “amethystine spodumene” that they discovered “kunzite”. They did not consider the color variant significant enough to deserve a varietal name. Their discovery and description was made 25 years before the term “kunzite” was applied to rose-pink to lilac (amethystine) spodumene. Was Branchville the first discovery of the “kunzite” color of spodumene? Egleston, in his Lectures in mineralogy published in 1872, describes the color of spodumene as “grayish green to greenish white, slightly reddish”. (Italics mine)

Bibliography:

Brush, George B., and Dana, Edward S., (1878) On a new and remarkable mineral locality in Fairfield County, Connecticut American Journal of Science, 3d ser., 16, 33-46 (1878).

Brush, George B., and Dana, Edward S., (1880) On the mineral locality at Branchville, Connecticut. Fourth paper. Spodumene and the results of its alteration American Journal of Science, 3d ser., 20, 257-284 (1880).

Egleston, T. (1872) Lectures in Mineralogy Van Nostrand, New York

Shainin, Vincent E. (1946) The Branchville, Connecticut, Pegmatite American Mineralogist Volume 31, pages 329-345, 1946

D E Russell --Gemology 04:58, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]