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Download hereGENERAL DESCRIPTION
Sapphirine is an aluminium, iron and magnesium silicate. It forms in metamorphic rocks of high temperature (aluminous and magnesian rocks, poor in silica). Sapphirine comes in granulous masses and irregular grains.
Nice crystals are rather rare: they are tabular and flattened, with a hexagonal shape and their faces are not very distinct. Sapphirine is pale blue in color to deep blue and transparent. It is found usually associated with spinel, corundum, kyanite and garnet.
Sapphirine deposits are not very numerous, one can quote the Walker Mounts in Canada (tabular crystals of 3 cm), the Androy area in Madagascar (grains of 1,5 cm in diameter and crystals of 4 cm), Fiskenæsset in Greenland, Strangeways Range in Australia, the island of Naxos in Greece...
In France, there is currently only one deposit indexed on the "min.dat" database : in the granulite of the Lherz pond, near Saint-Giron in Ariège.
The place of conservation of this type is not known.
Did you know? Sapphirine one is sometimes used as gem.
HISTORY : Named because of its colour blue as saphir
Species described in 1819 by Karl Ludwig Giesecke, born Johann Georg Metzler (1761-1833), German artist and mineralogist
Type-locality: Fiskenaesset, Kitaa, Groënland
CHEMICAL FORMULA : (Al,Mg)8 (Al,Si)6 O20
CRYSTAL SYSTEM : Monoclinic
COLOR : Light blue, light green, white, gray, yellow, red
DIAPHANIETY : Transparent to translucent
LUSTER : Vitreous
STREAK : White
MORPHOLOGIE : Undistinctit crystals, tabular, grains or aggregates
HARDNESS : 7,5
CHEMICAL CLASS: 3,486
DENSITY : VIII - Silicates
GROUP : Aenigmatite-saphirine
STRUNZ CLASS BEFORE 2001 : 8/F.15-10
STRUNZ CLASS AFTER 2001 : 9.DH.40
