1.18" Double-Terminated Elbaite Tourmaline in Quartz - Siberia

Double-Terminated Elbaite Tourmaline in Quartz - Siberia #175649

This is a beautiful, double-terminated, bi-colored elbaite crystal that formed within a smoky quartz crystal. It was collected from the Mokhovaya Pegmatite Field of Eastern Siberia, Russia. The elbaite is capped by red-pink color along both terminations, shifting to golden-yellow through the middle of the crystal. This color shifting is best viewed by backlighting the crystal.

The elbaite tourmaline is 1.18" long and the entire specimen measures 1.9 x 1.2".

Elbaite is a form of tourmaline and is perhaps the most multicolored mineral. It has been discovered in virtually every color of the spectrum and has dramatically increased in popularity since the 1990s. While specimens are commonly faceted into gemstones, most high quality crystals are left as is, or are cut and sold as cross-sectional slices. Elbaite forms as short, stubby, and/or elongated prismatic crystals, often with striations that run along their length. Aggregates of elbaite can occur as botryoidal, columnar, radiating crystals, and in compact masses.

Elbaite has a variety of names (classic and modern) depending on the colors it presents, including achroite (colorless variety), blue cap tourmaline, chrome tourmaline (green variety caused by chromium impurities), fluor-elbaite, indicolite (blue variety), Moor's head tourmaline, mushroom tourmaline, Paraiba tourmaline, rubellite (pink-red variety), siberite (purple variety), verdelite (green variety), and watermelon tourmaline (green exterior with red interior).

The chemical formula of elbaite is Na(Li,Al)3Al6(BO3)3Si6O18(OH)4

View All Mineral Specimens