Chrysocolla with Native Copper

A specimen with a lot of history! Admittedly, rather an ugly brute comprising Native Copper pervading and forming a small protruding branch from a mass of dark olive green Chrysocolla. But do not readily dismiss this as it it’s a specimen oozing with history! Henry Heuland was a famous English mineralogist and dealer and famously held a series of auctions, the catalogues for which are still in existence today; a set still resides within the Natural History Museum, London. This very specimen was Lot 44 in a Heuland Auction held in 1832 and was purchased by Isaac Walker (1794-1853), a British collector. Two very old unprovenanced labels accompany this specimen; the smaller most defiantly that of Walker (although unnamed, see Crystal Classics’ Munich Show report), the other possibly of Heuland, together with a modern English collector’s label on which details are supplied. This a ‘must have’ for the connoisseur of historic mineralogy and mineralogical research, especially if you have detailed copies of Heuland’s records amongst your personal archive.