10.1" Wide, Single Side Polished Labradorite - Madagascar

This is a beautiful labradorite specimen with one face polished, collected from Madagascar. The base of the piece has been cut flat so that it stands up on it's own without the use of a stand. The one polished face allows the piece an entirely different personality when viewed in different angles while allowing the natural beauty of raw labradorite to remain present.

Part of the face contains sections of rock that didn't preserve with labradorescence, likely due to its composition. Unfortunately, it doesn't polish quite as nice as the labradorite, either, hence the reduced price for such a wonderfully colorful specimen.

Labradorite is a feldspar mineral most often found in mafic igneous rocks. Some specimens of labradorite exhibit what is called a "Schiller effect"; a strong play of iridescent blue, green, red, orange, and yellow colors. Labradorite is so well known for these spectacular displays of color that the phenomenon is also known as labradorescence. Specimens with high quality labradorescence are often polished and used as gemstones.

The labradorescence is not caused by the colors breflecting on the surface of the specimen. Instead, light enters the stone, hits a twinning crystal lattice surface within the stone, and reflects from that. The color seen is the color of light reflected from that twinning surface. Different twinning surfaces within the stone reflect different colors of light. Light reflecting from different twinning surfaces in various parts of the stone can give the stone a multi-colored appearance.

Labradorite is named after Labrador, Canada, where it was first found. Today, the most prolific deposits for most commercially available labradorite occur in Madagascar and Russia.
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DETAILS
SPECIES
Labradorite
LOCATION
Madagascar
SIZE
7.4" tall, 10.1" wide, 18 pounds
CATEGORY
ITEM
#92063