Best viewed using Adobe Flash Player (8 or higher).
Download hereGENERAL DESCRIPTION
Azurite is, with malachite, one of the two most common minerals of weathering of copper. The crystals are of a sharp blue, more or less dark according to the thickness of its aggregates. They show an adamantine vitreous luster and are sometimes transparent to translucent.
Azurite frequently presents a pseudo-rhombohedric habit and the crystals join to form roughcast nodules. There are also elongated, or grouped in flowers, but they are not frequent.
Azurite is known in almost all the veins containing of copper, but those having delivered in abundance aesthetic samples and of important size are very few.
Splendid crystals were discovered at the beginning of the exploitation of the mine Copper Queen with Bisbee (Arizona), in Mexico (Design del Oro) and more recently in Tsumeb (Namibia) and Morocco (Touissit) where beautiful crystals of several centimetres were discovered.
In France, one finds it in the very famous mine and type-locality of Chessy-les-Mines in the Rhône, but also in Cap Garonne in the Var among much other localities. Known since the antiquity, azurite was used like pigment in painting, but constitutes, especially when it is abundant, a very good copper ore.
The type is kept at the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (Paris, France). This material was studied by F.S. Beudant.
HISTORY : Name inspired from Persian word "lazhward" meaning "blue", in reference to its color
Species redescribed and renamed in 1824 par François-Sulpice Beudant (1787-1850), French mineralogist and geologist
Type-locality: Chessy-les-Mines, Rhône, France
ANCIENT NAME : Fleur de cuivre bleu, cuivre carbonaté bleu
CHEMICAL FORMULA : Cu3 (CO3)2 (OH)2
CRYSTAL SYSTEM : Monoclinic
COLOR : Light blue to dark blue
DIAPHANIETY : Transparent to opaque
LUSTER : Vitreous
STREAK : Light blue
MORPHOLOGIE : Tabular crystals, prismatic, rhomboedric, massive, earthy, as roses, botryoidal
HARDNESS : 3,5-4,0
CHEMICAL CLASS: 3,78
DENSITY : V - Carbonates, nitrates and borates
GROUP : Azurite
STRUNZ CLASS BEFORE 2001 : 5/C.01-10
STRUNZ CLASS AFTER 2001 : 5.BA.05
