Fluorite and pyromorphite from maxonchamp

huge specimen

Name: green and purple fluorite with pyromorphite

Provenance: Former Maxonchamp mine, Vosges, France

Size: 43x40cm

largest cube: 6.5 cm

specimen of this size not found

In the Vosges at Maxonchamp, there is an important vein of fluorite, located in the northern part of a known north/south fault over two kilometers in length. The mineralized lens develops over approximately 250 meters in length and 180 meters in height, with a mineralized thickness that can reach 5 to 6 meters. The deposit was exploited at the end of the 20th century by the Société des mines du Haut-du-Them, through seven levels of galleries.

Fluorite is of course most often massive, however crystallized geodes have been found at all levels of the deposit. Fluorite cubes are quite often very large, commonly with cube edges of 10 to 20 cm, sometimes more, but most often completely covered with a multitude of whitish to milky quartz crystals. Smaller sized crystals are sometimes partially free of this covering, rarely completely.

Among the other minerals present at Maxonchamp, we note that barite and calcite are rare, we find galena, which very rarely and locally gave pyromorphite, some very beautiful yellow-straw to orange specimens are known. We can also note cerussite, wulfenite, azurite, malachite, langite, chalcopyrite,…