Fluorite with Aragonite

To state a specimen is ‘the best one has ever seen’ has become a descriptive cliché and to me, a cliché is like a red rag to a bull.  However, this quite amazing Fluorite, partly encrusted with snow-white Aragonite, is the best I have ever had the pleasure of handling from the Lavrion Mining District on the Attica Peninsula of southern Greece.  This superb cabinet specimen is composed of semi-transparent, pale sky-blue cubic crystals mainly between 3 and 3.5 cm on edge, and each exhibiting subtle lilac and deep sky-blue colour zoning around their edges.  The Aragonite forms rounded, lustrous, pearlescent crystals averaging 2 to 5 mm, strung-out over the display surface, often highlighting the boundaries between the large cubic crystals.  Although the specific mine is not known, good Fluorite specimens were produced from the Kamariza district (now named Agios Konstantinos) and, a little to the south, the Sounion district.  This is a magnificent and beautiful coloured Fluorite from this ancient and wonderfully historic mining district, and a specimen from the Dr Josef Clemente (1899-1987) Collection of southern Germany, who purchased it in 1970.