Baryte

In my opinion this is a beautiful Romanian Baryte, a real little stunner with wonderful aesthetic appeal. Thin Baryte blades to 2 cm wide grow in parallel to form a curved, splayed out fan of cream crystals, all capped with vivid saffron yellow terminations. These stand almost vertically across the back of the specimen and appear like a complex set of inter-meshed gear wheels. In front of these, a more jumbled array of similar crystals cover a flat matrix of cream Baryte. What appears to be a museum exchange label bears the entry “Barytes, yellow, Kapnik, Hungary”. “Kapnik” is the German for “Cavnic” and this very northern part of Romania was once a part of the Kingdom of Hungary. An exceptional and well-priced large miniature from the Cavnic mining district in Maramureș County, Romania.