Wulfenite

Mežica Mines, Mežica, Slovenia

A rich group of wulfenite, crystallized almost all around with tablets to 7 mm on edge. Thick crystals in honey to caramel orange crowd the upper edge in a dense, lively cluster, and many show the layered, color-zoned edges of the “sandwich” wulfenite that is so typical of Mežica. Between them, a carpet of tiny crystals glitters across the surface. Only a small window of pale matrix (limestone) shows beneath the crystals. Mežica in Slovenian Carinthia is one of the classic wulfenite localities of Europe. Over some 350 years of mining, more than 1,000 km of tunnels were driven through the mountain. Wulfenite was so abundant there that the miners extracted it separately and processed it for molybdenum. A beautiful, fully crystallized specimen of 10 cm in the true Mežica style.