Cinnabar with Dolomite & Quartz

Cinnabar with Dolomite and Quartz from the Chatian Mine, Fenghuang County, Hunan Province, China, measuring 64 × 52 × 31 mm and weighing 108 grams. A striking red specimen from one of the world's most important mercury-producing provinces.

Cinnabar is mercury sulfide, HgS, trigonal, and it is the principal ore mineral of mercury, typically forming as bright red crystals, grains or coatings within carbonate-hosted hydrothermal deposits. Hunan Province sits within a major low-temperature mercury-antimony mineral belt in southern China, where Cinnabar was deposited by hydrothermal fluids moving through dolomitic host rock, with Quartz as an accompanying gangue mineral. Fenghuang County's mines, including Chatian, have become known over the past two decades for producing some of the finest crystallised Cinnabar specimens now reaching the international market, rivalling the historic Chinese benchmark locality of Wanshan.

Well-crystallised Cinnabar on matrix, rather than massive ore-grade material, is the form collectors look for, and a piece of this size and colour saturation is a strong representative of the modern Hunan material. This piece is from the David Vince Collection.