Natural Orange Rusty Quartz from Bulgaria 1.9kg

A large quartz group dominated by two broad, steeply pointed crystals rising side by side from a milky white base. Their faces carry a warm orange iron-oxide coating that lies heaviest at the tips and thins downward, so the color grades from deep rust at the top through apricot and pale honey to clear white at the base. Under the staining the quartz is milky to translucent, and the growth surfaces show a fine chevron texture where each layer built on the one before it. Smaller white crystals and a scattering of dark pyrite specks fill the ground between the two main points.

The orange is iron oxide deposited on the quartz after it crystallized, not color inside the stone. From the Bulgarian lead-zinc field in the Rhodope Mountains. Untreated. Quartz is 7 on the Mohs scale, so the piece is hard and takes handling well, but at 1.9kg and 130mm across it is meant to sit somewhere permanent.

Natural orange rusty quartz, Bulgaria, single piece.