Historic Maryland Mineralogical Epiphany

The specimen pictured above has been sitting around in my office for five years: a mystery mineral. Part of the issue related to a presumably mistaken belief that  it had once been in the company of minerals uncovered during excavation for Baltimore's subway in the 1970's.  No one who saw it ever came close to making a visual identification. For that matter, the matrix looked similar enough to gabbro, that no one ever thought of trying to scratch it

More curious were the radiating crystals: Could they be a zeolite? Aragonite, perhaps?  Of course, had we known the specimen was collected in Harford County or even contemplated that the material was from anywhere other than  the Baltimore Subway Digs, such confusion would not likely have lingered.

To observe the similar specimen pictured at left, in a case at  the Gem, Lapidary, and Mineral Society of Montgromery County's annual show in Gaithersburg, on the weekend of March 15 and 16, 2014, came like an epiphany.  E.M. Bye's historic label identified it as steatite with altered actinolite" from Harford County.
                         
The specimen was in a case of vintage and historically significant Maryland mineral specimens that were  once  part of the world class collection that the Philadelphia Academy had ignominiously stashed away out of sight and devoid of care for decades. Ultimately, in 2007, the Academy sold the collection to several high-end dealers. It was  the most historically  important mineral collection in America and valued well beyond what any other museum could afford to pay.

Mineral Biss was the first to report that Fred Parker had later been able to acquire for posterity most of the collection's Maryland material, which almost surely comprises the most historically significant suite of  Maryland minerals known to exist. Since few of these Maryland-collected pieces had the uniqueness or aesthetic appeal as the kind of specimens in which the dealers who purchased it normally traded, Parker had been able to buy the Maryland pieces for a price that was pleasing to all concerned.

In 2012, after  deciding to downsize his collection and eventually move out of state, Parker contacted Chris Luzier, then Vice-President of Gem, Lapidary, and Mineral Society of Montgomery County about acquiring the suite. That story, with specifics on more of the actual specimens will be the topic of an upcoming Mineral Bliss post.

Meanwhile, can we be certain that this really is altered actinolite on steatite? The steatite, of course, by its softness, is obvious. And while the scientific means of identifying minerals has evolved considerably since E.M. Bye collected the specimen in the 1800's, altered actinolite certainly seems like a good bet.   As for a specific locality in Harford County, it seems extremely likely to have been the Harford Talc And Quartz Company Quarries, as  described in Minerals of Maryland, by Ostrander and Price, published in 1940 by the Natural History Society of Maryland:

HARFORD TALC AND QUARTZ  COMPANY QUARRIES

About one half mile west of Dublin, several large openings have been made in Steatite.  

Minerals to be found are green translucent foliated talc, radiated actinolite, asbestosform anthophyllite, dolomite, calcite, brown vermiculite,  limonite, and calcite in brown phlogopite schist.  

My "mystery" piece is now has a label that states the following: Radiated Actinolite in Steatite from Harford County, Maryland (Probably the Harford Talc and Quartz Company Quarries near Dublin.) 

Checking Out the East Coast's Biggest Show

Though a far cry from all that goes on in Tucson, the East Coast Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show, which happened August 13-15 at the Better Living Center in West Springfield, Massachusetts, is as big as it gets here in the eastern part of the United States. A great overview of what the show was like, expressed mostly in photos, is the subject of John S. White's 597th post at Jordi Fabre's FMF Minerals Forum and Discussion Board. Photography has to be the quickest and easiest way to communicate the essence of a show. As for me, once through the door and past the 50 case exhibition of minerals from Bill Larson's (Pala International) collection, I quickly became too loaded down with rocks for dealing with the camera.


My favorite of the 50 Bill Larson cases appears in our title image featuring topaz and aquamarine crystals from Burma (Myanmar). Because of a schedule that limited my attendance at the show to Friday, I had to miss Bill's talk on Satruday entitled "Mining, Minerals, & Gems from the Legendary Valley of Rubies, Mogok Burma." Much of the mineralogy---and for that matter the cuisine---from that country fascnates me. I'd be curious if Bill discussed when and how such a seemingly endless supply of great stones get out from under the oppressive military dictatorship that rules.


It's easy enough to imagine, though, how someone could smuggle out the faceted .047 carat johachidolite pictured at left. Purchased from my friend Cassandra at the Dudley Blauwet Gems booth, it reflects my penchant for acquiring species I've never heard of and still intrigues me more than a week later.

Despite emphasizing gems thus far, one of my favorite aspects of the East Coast Mineral, Gem and Fossil Show is its preponderance of mineral specimens over gems and fossils. On occasion and for a variety of reasons, even ugly minerals sometimes grab my interest. Should anyone deem it to be ugly, the reason for my most sizeable purchase this year, the 5" x 5" x 1" chunk of fluoro-potassichastingsite shown below at right, was that Alfredo Petrov convinced me that it could be the biggest specimen ever collected of this rare amphibole. Its type and only known locality is the Greenwood Mine, an old magnetite mine about a three mile hike through the woods near Woodbury Township in Orange County, New York. Fluoro-potassichastingsite is not, by the way, the longest mineral name I've ever encountered. Last October, my eBay store, Jake's Minerals sold a protomanganoferroanthophyllite micromount to a collector in France. Such rare amphiboles are generally not very expensive. Alfredo was also selling a protoanthophyllite piece of which the only known specimens were taken from a Japanese drill core sample. "Much of the value," says Alfredo, "is in getting it tested."

Meanwhile, and as this is written, another Martin Zinn Show, about which people in West Springfield were expressing tremendous enthusiasm, is happening in Cartersville, Georgia. Much as I'd like to be there, my office is in the process of becoming buried under rocks. I don't understand how the collectors and dealers who do so many shows with such frequency find the time to sort out all the booty that inevitably results.