Quartz with Montmorillonite

Monday, January 23, 2012

Quartz with Montmorillonite

Recently I came across some amazing new quartz specimens for my collection. I will be using them to make pendants in the next few months. Some of these items are extremely rare, so rare that many of the inclusions are still alluding me at this point. I am going to show you a series of photos of my quartz with montmorillonite. Try a search on google for quartz with montmorillonite and see how many images you can find. It's not very many.

Quartz with Montmorillonite and other minerals

These photos are of my quartz crystals with iridescent pink montmorillonite. There are other minerals in these stones as well. Perhaps mica is one of them. The image I received from my supplier showed some very dirty, odd looking crystals. I took a chance because I just had a hunch that underneath all of that mud, something spectacular was hiding, and I was right.

Quartz with Montmorillonite, mica and other minerals

These stones practically glow. I have never seen anything like these before and it took quite a bit of research to figure out that the pink pearly mineral is most likely montmorillonite, which is a type of clay. There is montmorillonite in bentonite clay. People have used montmorillonite for healing for centuries.

Quartz with Montmorillonite and other minerals

This one has a coarse pink powdery clay that has been falling out of the hole you see on top. It is especially interesting because while inside the crystal it looks very opalescent, but the dust just looks like pink dirt on the outside.

Quartz with Montmorillonite and other minerals

I am so excited to work with these and hope they can handle the heat because these things are truly a spectacular find. I think I'm going to use my new design to limit the amount of heat exposed to the stone. The following is an example of how I am probably going to hang these.