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7.7" Tall, Copper Ore Bookends - Keweenaw Peninsula, Michigan
This is a beautiful pair of natural copper ore bookends from Michigan’s historic Keweenaw Peninsula, once the world’s leading source of exceptionally pure native copper. Each bookend showcases striking veins of natural copper running through the host rock. They have been cut flat, finished with a protective clear epoxy coating, and fitted with cork-lined bases.
The bookends measure 7.7" and 6.45" tall, approximately 5.3–5.5" wide, and 1.5" thick.
The bookends measure 7.7" and 6.45" tall, approximately 5.3–5.5" wide, and 1.5" thick.
About Michigan Native Copper
Native copper is an uncombined form of copper that occurs as a natural mineral. Copper is one of the few metallic elements to occur in native form, although it most commonly occurs in oxidized states and mixed with other elements. Native copper was an important ore of copper in historic times and was used by prehistoric peoples.
Native copper occurs rarely as isometric cubic and octahedral crystals, but more typically as irregular masses and fracture fillings. It has a reddish, orangish, and/or brownish color on fresh surfaces, but typically is weathered and coated with a green tarnish of copper carbonate.
The mines of the Keweenaw Peninsula in Upper Michigan were major copper producers in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and are still the largest deposits of native copper in the world. Native Americans mined copper on a small scale at this and several other locations, and evidence exists of copper trading routes throughout North America among native peoples, proven by isotopic analysis. The first commercial mines in the Keweenaw Peninsula (which is nicknamed the "Copper Country" and "Copper Island") opened in the 1840s.
Native copper is an uncombined form of copper that occurs as a natural mineral. Copper is one of the few metallic elements to occur in native form, although it most commonly occurs in oxidized states and mixed with other elements. Native copper was an important ore of copper in historic times and was used by prehistoric peoples.
Native copper occurs rarely as isometric cubic and octahedral crystals, but more typically as irregular masses and fracture fillings. It has a reddish, orangish, and/or brownish color on fresh surfaces, but typically is weathered and coated with a green tarnish of copper carbonate.
The mines of the Keweenaw Peninsula in Upper Michigan were major copper producers in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and are still the largest deposits of native copper in the world. Native Americans mined copper on a small scale at this and several other locations, and evidence exists of copper trading routes throughout North America among native peoples, proven by isotopic analysis. The first commercial mines in the Keweenaw Peninsula (which is nicknamed the "Copper Country" and "Copper Island") opened in the 1840s.
$395
SPECIES
Copper
LOCATION
Keweenaw Peninsula, Michigan
SIZE
7.7" tall, 5.3" wide, 1.5" thick
CATEGORY
ITEM
#335420
