Description

Small, richly crystallized specimen of hemimorphite in elongated, white, glassy tabular crystals. They are partially covered by greenish-brown smithsonite, which is well expressed in this sample.

This ancient specimen comes from the Altenberg mine at La Calamine (Kelmis), which was located near Moresnet, in the Vieille Montagne concession, in the Liège province of Belgium.

World-famous as the cradle of the zinc industry in the 19th century, the mine closed when it was exhausted in 1884. At the time, it was located in what was known as “neutral Moresnet”, a territory that belonged to no country, wedged between Belgium, Prussia (later Germany) and the Netherlands.

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