1.3" Bi-Colored Elbaite Tourmaline with Mica - Siberia

Bi-Colored Elbaite Tourmaline with Mica - Siberia #175651

This is a beautiful, bi-colored elbaite crystal that formed in association with purple mica (lepidolite?). It was collected from the Mokhovaya Pegmatite Field of Eastern Siberia, Russia. The elbaite is capped by red-pink coloration, shifting to golden-yellow below the termination(s). There is a layer of red-pink elbaite that wraps around the golden core. This color shifting is best viewed by backlighting the crystal.

The elbaite tourmaline is 1.3" long and the entire specimen measures 1.8 x 1.6". It has been mounted to an acrylic display base with mineral tack.

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

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