Quartz

This specimen features a transparent to milky-white, translucent quartz crystal accompanied by a few smaller sidecar crystals at its base. The main crystal is sharply terminated, with excellent preservation of the prism faces and termination. Minor contact is present at the base where the crystal was separated from its original matrix, but this does not detract from the overall aesthetics.

The specimen comes from the Black Rapids Quartz Mine in Ontario, a locality also historically known as the Lyndhurst or Steele Mine. As documented by Sabina (1967), the deposit was originally worked during World War II to supply high-purity quartz for radio and radar equipment. Beginning in the early 1950s, exceptionally large quartz crystals, some exceeding 30 cm in length and including doubly terminated examples, were recovered from both open-pit and underground workings within a breccia zone hosted by gneiss.

By the early 1960s, the property was operated by J. B. (Jim) Steele, who supplied quartz crystals directly to the mineral trade. This specimen is from the collection of Robert Yeoman.