1.45 kg Fluorite Skull – Trapped Fire

For seventy-four years European chemists tried to set free the fire sleeping in this stone. André-Marie Ampère wanted to name it after the Greek word for “corrupting” (verderblich), and in Greek as in Russian it bears this name to this day; in our language it is called Fluorite after the stone that harbors it. Those who came too close paid the price. Humphry Davy left with eye injuries, Gay-Lussac and Thénard suffered excruciating pain after inhaling corrosive hydrofluoric acid vapors. The Irish Knox brothers were heavily poisoned despite apparatus made specifically from fluorite; Paulin Louyet and Jérôme Nicklès paid with their lives. They are known as the Fluorine martyrs. Only on June 26, 1886 did Henri Moissan conquer the element in Paris. He worked with vessels of platinum and iridium, sealed with plugs of fluorite, as if the stone alone could hold what slept within it. In the freed gas, sulfur flared into flames, hydrogen exploded. In 1906 Moissan received the Nobel Prize, and two months later he was dead, scarred by several poisonings. On this skull, that fire seems to have broken out. On one side of the skull, an explosion of orange and rust erupts, threaded with dark, angular shards: a stain burned in forever, or plasma so incandescent that it pours into the skull without regard for loss, producing orange tones that seem otherworldly. Across the face runs a band of at least ten lines, densely packed in barely four millimeters. En route, it reveals a tiny geode fissure, in which the finest fluorite needles glitter. It changes color without ever tearing, and in the left eye it fuses with iron oxide as if the glow burned to the gaze itself. Over the nose, teeth, and lower jaw, a similar banding continues, broader and with even more lines. The other skull side presents a calmer appearance. Broad, creamy bands surround it, and in their midst rise mountain peaks, some as flat drawings, others as pyramids, flowing beneath the surface into the semi-transparent depths. The calvarium, finally, bears fluorite in its classic form: deeply transparent, wine- and purple-colored, in streams and patterns of great color variety. Those mountain peaks are sunken crystals. The fluorite grew layer upon layer into an open cavity. Each layer formed small crystals, mostly cubes, whose corners and edges show jaggedness and pyramids in cross-section, until the next layer overgrew and sealed them forever. Each band marks a distinct growth phase, and where its color changes, the conditions under which the stone grew had altered. Thus this skull bears a mountain range of frozen time, an ingrained mark, and inside it the most reactive of all elements, tamed as long as the stone holds it. Material: Fluorite (calcium fluoride), banded, with orange, iron oxide-rich portions Origin: Brazil Dimensions: 12.3 x 8.1 x 9.3 cm Weight: 1.45 kg Special features: Explosive orange iron oxide area with dark, angular inclusions on the left half of the skull extending to the left eye; delicate banding of at least ten lines across the face over 3–4 mm with a small natural geode fissure and tiny fluorite crystals; further broader banding over the nose, teeth, and lower jaw; creamy banding with jagged and pyramid-shaped crystal outlines on the right side of the skull; deeply transparent wine-colored fluorite on the cranial vault; typical fluorite natural hairline cracks and micro-fissures, among others on the forehead, calvaria, and mandible; isolated natural pores and matte-granular patches on the cheek and jaw.

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