A handsome palm-sized specimen from Slieve Meelmore in the Mourne Mountains, County Down, Northern Ireland, featuring a classic association of smoky quartz and orthoclase feldspar. The piece displays several very small but sharp, lustrous, prismatic crystals of richly coloured smoky quartz rising from blocky cream-coloured orthoclase.
These minerals formed within fracture zones and quartz veins cutting the Mourne granite, where miarolitic cavities occasionally develop and host attractive crystallized minerals. The Mourne Mountains have been known for such mineralization for centuries, with some cavities historically producing fine aquamarine and topaz as well as quartz and feldspar as seen here. Specimens from this locality are seldom encountered on the market, making this an good representative example of classic Mourne Mountain pegmatitic mineralization. From the collection of Robert Yeoman.
