Based on a specimen from Yekaterinburg, Russia

This model is based on a very unusual but completely natural specimen, and there is a story behind it as well.

Most of the time, I model specimens that are in my personal collection. I’m not strict about this rule, but having a guideline in place prevents me from being distracted by all the gorgeous crystal drawings out there, and keeps me from spending all my time modeling beautiful rarities that I’m not likely to see in person. But just this once, I allowed myself to be persuaded by the incredible form of John White’s “Odd Garnet” described in the March/April 2025 issue of Rocks and Minerals magazine.

Large complex tsavorite garnet model based on a specimen from Merelani Hills, Tanzania

I bought the crystal fragment this model is based on at the Tucson show in 2022. It’s about the size of my thumbnail, and around half complete. While it’s a pretty shade of green, it’s not gemmy, and certainly not undamaged. According to objective standards, it’s not a great specimen, and not the type of crystal most collectors are looking for, but I dug through about 6 flats of “better” specimens to find it. What attracted me to this specimen was its complex and interesting crystal habit. But, as you can see in the photo, it’s difficult to see all the faces clearly and tell how they are arranged, so I made an idealized CAD model to better represent what the crystal would have looked like if it had developed symmetrically.

Based on a specimen from Luc Yen Mine, Yen Bai Province, Vietnam.

I love the idea of displaying a mineral inside a box or case that’s a matching crystal model. It seems like a perfect way to show off a specimen with particularly good form, and present an impressive or surprising specimen in a unique way. This twinned spinel specimen isn’t perfectly smooth or gemmy like some smaller crystals in my collection, but its large size made it the perfect candidate for a custom display.

Based on a specimen from Turin, Piedmont, Italy.

Surprisingly, some of the most unique crystals I have modeled have been garnets. The odd garnet described here and the complex tsavorite shown here are examples. This is another. The garnet crystal that this model is based on is elongated along one of its fourfold axes, making it look tetragonal instead of isometric. It really doesn’t look much like a garnet at all, and it took a little while for me to convince myself that that’s what it was!

Based on specimens from Russia and Canada

At the 2023 East Coast show in Springfield MA, I was delighted to find two complex spinel crystal specimens from two different dealers. One, from Siberia, was large, sharp, and highly symmetrical like something out of a textbook. The other, from Baffin Island, Canada, was a pleasing shade of dark blue but distorted in a way that made its jumble of faces difficult to sort out. I bought them both, but upon further investigation in my hotel room that evening I was disappointed to find that both crystals were bounded by the exact same forms! Although I was initially grumpy about the coincidence, I eventually realized that models of these crystals would make a very nice pair. The completed set makes the similarities between these two seemingly very different crystals readily apparent.