The pieces here are sure to please the seeker of the unusual. Featured, is a material that is called Moldavite. It is in the group of stones called tektites. This stone is found in the Molda River area in the area of the world formerly called Czechoslovakia. It fell to earth 15 million years ago. Moldavite is very scarce and is truly prized by all who are fortunate to own a piece. The consensus opinion is that this material is a result of a meteorite impact and fusion with earth material that sprayed out of the crater formed by the crash. It resembles green glass with peculiar distortions on the surface and often has bubbles trapped inside. There are two grades of moldavite, high quality often referred to as museum grade, and regular grade. You can tell them apart by the way they look. The regular grade pieces are usually darker and more saturated in dark green color, the surface is seen as closely spaced pitting or weathering. They some times appear to have been broken apart from a larger chunk.
The museum quality has a distinct pattern kind of like some sort of fern , and is much more translucent than the regular grade. There is usually a fairly big difference in the price between the two.
The museum flower bursts are much more prized by the connoisseur. |
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The following comments are from a Louis Varricchio, a visitor to our site
and I have included his remarks as sent:
Your moldavite jewelry is beautiful! But you might like to add to your moldavite description that a second theory is maintained by some scientists stating that their origin is lunar; they are closer to volcanic glass than real impact melt. Moldavites, and likely most tektites, are fragments blown off the Moon in rare, violent pyroclastic
eruptions. A sample of tektite glass--identical in major element chemistry to those found on Earth--has been identified in an Apollo 12
rock sample collected by astronauts in 1969 (sample No. 12013).
Louis Varricchio is a graduate student in the Space Studies Department of the University of North Dakota. He is also a freelance science correspondent for public radio. |
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The following comments are from visitor Vojtech Pavlik:
Hi!
Just to comment on your paragraph about the origins of the Moldavite on the http://www.wehug.com/tektite-moldavite-gallery.html page: The area of the world formerly called Czechoslovakia is now called Czech Republic. And the river was never called Molda, the real name is Vltava in Czech, or Moldau in German, wherefrom the name of the mineral comes. The Czech name for the mineral is Vltavin. The meteorite which created the moldavites did indeed hit the earth some 15
million years ago, but the actual point of impact was somewhat more south, in Austria, however the splashes of the hot mineral glass traveled a couple hundred kilometers through the air, landing in the South of the Czech Republic, around the Vltava river ....
I've looked (Vojtech Pavlik) on the web and found
somewhat more about moldavites:
* First mentions in scientific literature in 1787 by Josef Mayer of Charles University of Prague* The German name moldavite was first used by F.X.Zippe in 1836
* The Czech name vltavin came into use shortly after* Most often found in South Bohemia and South Moravia (south areas of the Czech republic), but also found elsewhere in the central Europe * The greatest South Bohemian moldavite weighs 110,9 grams, the greatest South Moravian is 265,5 grams * Exact age 14.8 million years
* Place of meteorite impact is the Riess crater, in Bavaria, Germany * Total mass of the moldavite glass scattered is around 275 tons * Used in the stone age for making knives and arrow tips * First use as a gemstone in 1891 on Prague centennial exhibition, with a lot of success and used ever since * Moldavite-rich locations: Besednice, Borovany, Dolni Chrastany, Habri, Kamenicky ujezd, Koroseky, Lhenice, Locenice, Malovicky, Nesmen, Nechov, Netolice, Radomilice, Slavce |
