EXCEPTIONAL SULFUR . ...

Description

EXCEPTIONAL SULFUR
Cozzodisi Mine, Casteltermini, Agrigento Province, Sicily, Italy
Sulfur & Brimstone - one of the foundations of Ancient as well as Modern industrial chemistry, without which life, as we know it, would be impossible. No Sulfur - no tires, fertilizer, modern paper, car batteries, matches and a host of other products we've all come to depend upon. For hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years the volcanic island of Sicily has provided the Mediterranean world with wine, olives, cheese and ... Sulfur. Labyrinthine passages, hewn by hand, honeycomb the rocks of the island. Sulfur from these deposits was mined, melted and cast into portable chunks for trade wherever merchant ships of the area traveled. All of which came to a crashing halt around 1900 when the Frasch Process proved to be more economical, slowly choking the Sicilian Sulfur mining industry to death. During that slow decline, miners supplemented their income by carefully saving the occasional, well crystallized specimen they encountered as they dug the raw Sulfur. The earliest date associated with this specimen is August 1972, as mentioned on an accompanying label from the Mineralogical Museum of Caltanissetta, indicating that the specimen had to have been mined prior to that. The specimen consists of a large group of bright yellow crystals on a minor colorless matrix of Calcite or Aragonite. The largest crystal is approximately 1½ inches across and all of them are transparent. The crystallization is sharp and the condition is excellent. With excellent provenance, it is from the award winning Jack Halpern Collection and measures 4½ x 3¾ x 2½ inches.

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