Cinnabar

Tongren Mine, Yunchangping Town, Bijiang District, Tongren, Guizhou, China

Twinned Cinnabar crystal of 2 cm in the form collectors call a “drill bit”, a large size for this twin habit. The crystal is deep red, translucent and lustrous, with smaller Cinnabar crystals clustered at its base. The group sits in a cavity of gray matrix lined with small white Quartz crystals, and the matrix carries massive Cinnabar in places. The mercury mines of Tongren in Guizhou are the classic locality for crystallized Cinnabar. Specimens first reached Western collectors in the 1980s, and most twinned crystals were found in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Large twins on matrix have become rare since.