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Post by stonesthatrock on Nov 3, 2008 22:39:04 GMT -5
i'm not sure, maybe someone can tell me if this is parrot wing chrysocola. ty ralph and mary ann
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Post by Michael John on Nov 4, 2008 12:17:52 GMT -5
Unfortunately, there's very little possibility of knowing that for sure ...
Genuine "Parrot Wing" comes from a location in Chihuahua, Mexico. The soil there is a conglomerate of a wide variety of minerals, each lending it's color to the material.
Every Chrysocolla vein has limitless varietal change throughout. You can dig a nice chunk out, but a chunk a foot away, up, down, or laterally, could look completely different. With the many minerals present around the veins in Chihuahua, no doubt the variance is unusually extreme. Most of their material has a lot of different colors in it, but some of it undoubtedly doesn't. There are many other locations which yield material with lots of colors, no doubt similar to some of the material found in Chihuahua. For instance, some of Rodney and Jamie's material is very colorful, and strikingly beautiful.
"Parrot Wing" has become somewhat of a "designer label". It's famous because it's colorful material that has been mined and marketed since the 70s, so people know "the name". So some people take colorful material, slap the "Parrot Wing" label on it, and sometimes double or triple the money they'd otherwise get for it. It's this phenomenon that now makes it difficult and sometimes impossible to know if what you are buying is genuine Parrot Wing.
BUT ... "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."
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Post by Michael John on Nov 4, 2008 12:46:22 GMT -5
If you're just looking for opinion ...
On the outside, that chunk looks like "typical" Chrysocolla ... bluish-green with shades of brown. I don't see any bright, vibrant colors that are "typical" of Parrot Wing. A more accurate opinion could be given if it were sliced. BUT, just because it doesn't have those bright, vibrant colors doesn't necessarily mean it's not from Chihuahua, it just means that you may have a hard time convincing someone that it is.
For clarification ... the term "Chrysocolla" is thrown around as a general term which is often very inaccurate. Although using the term to describe material which is dominated by the mineral Chrysocolla is somewhat understandable, using the term for these conglomerates is a real stretch. A more accurate description would be "jasp-agate".
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,466
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Post by Sabre52 on Nov 4, 2008 15:20:49 GMT -5
The only material I have which I'm sure is parrotwing did come out of Mexico and is more of a red jasper with chrysocolla steaks and veins. It's pretty silicified and the chrys is pretty deep blue but there are some green malachite looking areas too. Like Michael says, almost every copper mining area produces something that looks a bit like parrot wing in that it's matrix with blues from copper complexes but it's not necessarily as hard and bright as the true Mexican stuff. Most materials heavy in chrysocolla tend to be pretty brittle....Mel
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Post by Michael John on Nov 4, 2008 23:01:44 GMT -5
Yup, what Mel said. In particular, as Mel mentioned, one tell-tale sign of Parrot Wing is that the solid reds are a red Jasper, not Cuprite, as in most Arizona Chrysocolla and in many other locations. You can easily see the difference in a side-by-side comparison. But unfortunately, I don't see any red in that chunk.
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Post by stonesthatrock on Nov 6, 2008 10:21:01 GMT -5
ok ty both very much. i will cut it after the show this weekend and see what it looks like inside. your both so helpful. ty again ralph and mary ann
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