BLUE COLOR IS EVERLASTINGLY APPOINTED BY THE DEITY TO BE A SOURCE OF DELIGHT

Title from John Ruskin 

Ask the average Joe or Joette on the street what comes to their mind when thinking about the color blue. Probably the first thing that pops up is something about the color of a beautiful sky (something that has been rare this winter here in the Wisconsin woods). Others may talk about the blue ocean (again not always the case) and the interviewer might wonder if they really know that water absorbs colors, like a filter, in the red spectrum of light more efficiently than in the blue spectrum? But things are quite black in ocean depths greater than about 600 feet—not much light penetration. So, does this mean that the ocean is not really blue? What it means is that our eyes see the color blue when rather clear, low-nutrient, low sediment load, water is scattered by sunlight.

More “happy” philosophical Joes and Joettes might think that blue is a relaxing color and indicates stability and serenity and wisdom while those “down in the dumps” might associate the color with the noun blues meaning a less that happy, sadder, emotion. Now an artistic sort of hipster would define blues as a musical genre, something with a “blues scale” containing twelve bars and three cords in a particular order. Think B.B. King or John Belushi and Dan Alkaroad.

Now, ask an ole rockhound like me about what comes to mind with “blue”  and out pops azurite. You know, the copper carbonate mineral that seems to define a color to those of us in the know—a soft, deep blue we refer to as azure-blue. Every rockhound in the world can picture and define azure-blue—a perfect color associated with copper minerals like azurite, or water contaminated with dissolved copper minerals leaving copper sulfate (Cu²⁺ ).  

 

A specimen of azure-blue azurite om matrix from the "Bisbee Mine" in Arizona. Width FOV ~18 mm.

Somewhere a factoid once popped into my mind that said the copper-iron sulfide chalcopyrite was the most common copper mineral. Well, azurite is the most common copper mineral that the average Joe/Joette can identify. In a beginning mineralogy class azurite, with a chemical formula of Cu₃(CO₃)₂(OH)₂, is used to study positive cations combing with negative anions to create a mineral. The divalent copper II cation combines with a carbonate anion and a hydroxide anion, and voila, out pops the beautiful azure-blue azurite.

Azurite, with its magnificent blue color has been known to the world for centuries. For example, around 2500 BCE Egyptians used the mineral in painting projects. In the early years of the AD, Pliny the Elder, a Roman jack-of-all trades, wrote the thirty-seven volume, encyclopedic Naturalis Historia and described what we now know as azurite: a deep blue mineral associated with copper deposits and used as a pigment. Today azurite is still used as an artistic painting pigment and is one of the most collectable minerals, especially in the southwestern U.S. where passing tourists seem to associate the color with the local Native Americans. Other rockhounds like me just collect it for its beauty and color.

So, we all know about blue azurite but what about other, less common, blue minerals. Well, first of all, check out the December 2020 issue of the Pick & Pack https://www.csms1936.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/12Dec2020.pdf ) or a revised Blog version on October 24, 2024. But now I want to introduce you to: lemanskitte, lavendulan, and gibbsite.

Gibbsite, an aluminum hydroxide [Al(OH)₃], is one of the major components of the aluminum ore, bauxite—more on that later. Gibbsite has an interesting, seemingly simple, crystal structure with stacked sheets of linked octahedra. Each of the octahedrons has an aluminum ion bonded to six hydroxide groups (hydroxide equals one oxygen atom covalently bonded to one hydrogen atom). The stacked octahedrons are weakly bonded, and the mineral has perfect cleavage (001) similar to the micas; however, rockhounds rarely observe the cleavage due to the fine size of the gibbsite particles (mindat.org). Gibbsite is a mineral of many colors from white to green to yellow to shades of blue and purple. It usually is very soft and earthy (clay-like) with only rare crystals observable. Masses of gibbsite often form spherical or clumpy aggregates that are difficult to break apart and seem easily confused in hand specimens with masses of clay minerals.

Earthy and nodular cluster of gibbsite, most of which is colored blue by "mineral mixtures" according to MinDat. Width FOV ~1 cm.

Most gibbsite is produced by the weathering of aluminum-rich minerals (perhaps micas, feldspars, corundum and nepheline) and therefore is commonly found in weathering profiles that form in tropical and subtropical environments. Here “water” leaches out soluble materials such as silica and leaves behind iron and aluminum-rich oxides. The common sedimentary rock formed in these weathering profiles is bauxite, the major ore of aluminum., composed of gibbsite, Böhmite [AlO(OH)], and its dimorph diaspore [AlO)OH)]. Mix the three minerals together with copious amounts of the clay mineral kaolinite and the “mixed up mess” is called bauxite and it is terribly difficult to identify individual minerals in hand specimens.  

Gibbsite can also form in lateritic environments without combining with other bauxite-forming minerals, sort of a “stand alone” mineral. In deeply weathered igneous and metamorphic rocks, especially granite, gibbsite can form from the weathering of feldspars and micas. However, most gibbsites are formed in areas of high rainfall and warm temperatures where aluminum-rich rocks are located.

My specimen, ~11 x 20 mm, is from the Wenshan area of China and is part of a recent discovery, ca 2012 of attractive display specimens. Composed of aggregates of botryoidal sky blue to aquamarine colors. Mineral dealers believe the Wenshan deposits may be the best intensely colored gibbsite in the world.

Lavendulan and lemanskitte are what my mother from rural Kansas would term Kissin’ Cousins, something that is of a very similar character to another thing of the same type (Oxford Languages).

Lemanskiite is a “blue” mineral, mostly with a dark sky blue color and streak, occurring as groups or aggregates of  thin tetragonal plates or prismatic, needle-like crystals, on some type of matrix, although more massive material is found filling fractures. It is a soft mineral, ~2-3 (Mohs), and has a vitreous luster. The type locality is a sulfide-rich, epithermal deposit in the famous El Guanaco Mining District, Chile. Lemanskiite is a hydrous copper, calcium, and sodium chloroarsenate: NaCaCu₅(AsO₄)₄Cl · 3H₂O.

A 6 mm cluster of rare, beautiful, blue crystals of lemanskiite collected from the Type Locality, Guanaco Mine, Taltal, Antofagasta Province, Antofagasta, Chile.

So, its cousin lavendulan, a Monoclinic mineral (lemanskiite is Tetragonal), is a slightly different blue color described as pale blue and/or greenish blue, a pale blue streak, and also quite soft with a vitreous to waxy luster. It often occurs as thin crusts of quite tiny radiating fibers as a secondary mineral in copper-arsenate deposits (such as Gold Hill in Utah), hence a hydrous copper, calcium, and sodium chloroarsenate: NaCaCu₅(AsO₄)₄Cl · 5H₂O. The specimen below is from the obscure. poly-metallic (mostly copper), Alice Mary Mine, Kundip, Raventhorp Shire, western Australia.

Pale blue, almost massive, smear of minute lavendulan crystals
 

Sub millimeter cluster of minute lavendulan crystals.

Lavendulan has an interesting history as the mineral was named for the lavender color of the original type specimen by Johann Breithaupt in 1837 found near Annaberg in the “Ore Mountains” near the German-Czech Republic boundary (current geography).  Nearly two centuries later work by Ondruš and others (2006) and Giester and others (2007) determined Breithaupt’s original type specimen was a mixture of different minerals and unrelated to the current definition/determination of lavendulan. Therefore, the second located specimen of lavendulan was found near  Jachymov, also in the “Ore Mountains” of the Czech Republic and the Type Locality was moved to that location from Annaberg.

If that is not confusing enough, lemanskiite was originally described as a polymorph of lavendulan—sharing the same mineral formula but having different internal crystal structures, in this case Tetragonal and Monoclinic Systems. But along came Zubrovka and others in 2018 and determined that chloroarsenate lemanskiite had only three “waters” in its chemical makeup in contrast with five “waters” in lavendulan. (Bet you missed that in reading the above chemical compositions!!!Check it out.

Three waters or five waters or more, many blue minerals are very difficult to identify in micromounts. I found that it is best to look at the localities as noted in MinDat and identify blue minerals from their list and go from there. For example, lavendulan and lemanskiite, those pesky “how many waters” minerals, don’t often occur together and lavendulan is a much more common mineral, especially in copper arsenic mines.

The theme of the upcoming Tucson event is Red, White, and Blue; therefore, I expect to see some quite magnificent blue specimens.   

REFERENCES CITED

Giester, G., U. Kolitsch, P. Leverett, P. Turner, P. Williams, 2007, The crystal structures of lavendulan, sampleite, and a new polymorph of sampleite: European Journal of Mineralogy, Vol. 19. No.1,

Ondruš, P., D., Veselovský, F., Skála, R., Sejkora, J., Pažout, R., Fryda, J., Gabašová, A., Vajdak, J., 2006, Lemanskiite, NaCaCu₅(AsO₄)₄Cl·5H₂O, a new mineral species from the Abundancia mine, Chile: The Canadian Mineralogist, Vol.44, No. 2.

Zubkova, N. V., Pekov, I. V., Chukanov, N. V., Kasatkin, A. V., Ksenofontov, D. A., Yapaskurt, V. O., Britvin, S. N., Pushcharovsky, D. Yu, 2018, Redefinition of lemanskiite: new mineralogicald data, crystal structure, and revised formula NaCaCu₅(AsO₄)₄Cl · 3H₂O: Geology of Ore Deposits, Vol. 60, No. 7.

 

 

JOHANNSENITE AND NICKLE & DIME NOVELS

 

Two of my favorite classes in grad school were optical mineralogy and optical petrography. As the names imply, during the first semester we used petrographic microscopes to identify minerals as seen in thin sections. I have noted previously that I was never a stellar student in undergraduate mineralogy class, mostly due to crystallography. I just had, and still do, problems with visualizing and describing, three dimensional objects. Systems, Classes, Space Groups, symmetry, etc. just fogged up my brain. I was about ready to switch to another major, which would have been my fourth, when the crystallography section ended and we moved on to the physical, and understanding, aspects of minerals. Of course, in the spring semester I hit structural geology and stereograms/stereonets and about went bananas. Who thought up these objects of torture? Why was I being punished when all I wanted to do was hunt for fossils? Somehow, I advanced in the curriculum to “fun” courses like geomorphology, sedimentary geology, and the paleo sequence.

I was sort of terrified in moving on to grad school and finding out that the optical sequence was required for graduation. Then something happened—I loved the classes, the identification of minerals in the fall and following that with petrography in the spring semester where we learned how to better understand igneous and metamorphic rocks via examinations of thin sections. My life became much better, and certainly more exciting.

At any rate, our instructor owned several professional books that were available for use and stored in the lab. For some reason one particular go-to reference stood out in my mind: Petrography of the Igneous Rocks by Albert Johannsen, a Professor at the University of Chicago. Although Johannsen was no longer living in the mid-1960s, in those days I was awed by anyone teaching at Chicago, and certainly the Field Museum paleontologists who wandered around western South Dakota. Then there was the WOW factor, a commemorative plaque on campus stating: On December 2, 1942 man achieved here the first self-sustaining chain reaction and thereby initiated the controlled release of nuclear energy. The first self-sustaining nuclear chain reactor, an “atomic pile” officially dubbed CP-1 (Chicago Pile-1), operated under the stands of the former football stadium, Stagg Field. This pile of bricks and timbers was able to control nuclear fission. And so, the race was on and never stopped.

But the most remarkable item, at least in my young mind, was that Johannsen’s tome consisted of several volumes, four or five at least. My just developing mind wondered how could one person write “so much”? As MinDat stated: “He established quantitative definitions of rock analysis and rock classifications as well as redesigning the petrographic microscope. His descriptive multi-volume Petrography of the Igneous Rocks is a classic in petrography. The scholarly opus has lasted through several editions, thousands of students, and even today can be located on web sites of used book sellers. Although numerous later authors have published multiple books on the classification and description of igneous rocks, Johannsen’s works seem to be the father that started it all. Fortunately, today’s authors have much more information supplied by modern electronic gizmos.

Jonannsen’s original research appeared in over 40 scientific papers and books but his early contributions were papers dealing with improvements of the petrographic microscope, and how to identify minerals using a pet scope: Determination of Rock-Forming minerals (1908), Manual of Petrographic Methods (1918), and Essentials for the Microscopic Determination of Rock-Forming Minerals and Rocks in Thin Section (1922). 





J. Swift & Son, Dick Model Petrographic Microscope, 1891. 



J. Swift & Son, Dick ‘New” Model Petrographic Microscope,1910.

Johannsen, in his Manual of Petrographic Methods, described a number of different pet scopes and featured the Newer Dick Model shown above. Goren ( date unknown; see references) stated that the first scope capable of “quantitative scientific work was undoubtedly the petrographic microscope by AB Dick, whose principle he described in 1889 and which was conducted in 1891 in the catalogs of the company Swift & Son (color photo above courtesy of Dr. Yuval Goren). The “Newer Dick Model” was illustrated in the 1910 Swift catalog. I was unable to find out if Johannsen used a Dick Model scope; however, since he was an admirer of German scholarship I would bet on a Leitz!

Johannsen retired in 1937 (b. 1871) and the remaining years of his life were spent in nonscientific pursuits. Evidently, he had a interest in the nickel and dime novels of the late 19th century. Actually, it was more than just “an interest” since he wrote two volumes of the well respected The House of Beadle and Adams and Its Nickel and Dime Novels (1950). In reading this sentence I became completely confused about who/what was Beadle and Adams. OK, the following information comes from Registry.clir.org/projects/2028/.

By 1864, Beadle & Adams had sold more than five million dime novels, making them one of the most successful publishers in the country. The secret to this success was undercutting rival publishers by selling novels for a dime, which was significantly lower than the going rate of a dollar. This was achieved by using inexpensive paper, exploiting cheaper postage rates for periodicals, and reprinting previously published works. Although their popularity waned towards the end of the century, they were among the most significant and innovative publishers of their time, single-handedly responsible for popularizing the dime novel format and playing an important role in the evolution of American popular fiction. Johannsen’s novel, The House of Beadle and Adams and Its Nickel and Dime Novels (1950), was a landmark work in the study of 19th century popular literature and publishing.

While working on his book, Johannsen amassed one of the largest private collections of dime novels and story papers in the United States, that was purchased by Northern Illinois University in 1967. This collection contains 6,593 publications issued by Beadle and Adams between 1852 and 1897. Johannsen's The House of Beadle and Adams and their Nickel and Dime Novels (1950), is one of the most significant works of dime novel scholarship and bibliography of the 20th century.

In 1932 W. T. Schaller, speaking at the December meeting of the Mineralogical Society of America, described a new manganese pyroxene that he was naming johannsenite “in honor of Professor Albert Johannsen of the University of Chicago”. Because Schaller wanted to study additional specimens that were showing up from several new localities, the official publication date of the mineral name did not happen until 1938 with the publication of W.T. Schaller, Johannsenite, a new manganese pyroxene: American Mineralogist, 23 (9) 575-582. To further confuse the issue, Schaller based his description on material from Tetela de Ocampo, Puebla, Mexico, and nine plus other locales. MinDat lists two localities in Italy and Franklin, New Jersey, as the Co-Type Localities. Lauf (2010) believes the locality at Puebla, Mexico, has the strongest claim for the Type Locality. Interestingly, rockhounds collecting in the western U.S. are partial to getting specimens of johannsenite from the Iron Cap Mine in the well-known Aravaipa Mining District, Graham County, Arizona. 

Crystals of elongate “pyroxene-like” crystals of  johannsenite. Width FOV ~ 4.5 mm.

 

Mass of slender, acicular crystals of johannsenite. Width FOV ~7 mm.

 

Johannsenite, pyroxene-like crystals with white nekoite. Width FOV ~ 5 mm.

The Iron Cap Mine is a former surface and underground Pb-Zn-Ag-Cu-Au-Fluorspar mine where the major ores were sphalerite (zinc) and galena (lead). Mineralization is found in vein deposits hosted in the Horquilla Formation (Pennsylvanian) and the Pinkard Formation (Cretaceous). Some ore veins occur in faults between formations while others are found wholly in the limestone beds. The mine area also includes numerous intrusive veins of Cretaceous and Tertiary age cutting across Paleozoic rocks (Simons and Munson, 196).

Johannsenite is a somewhat uncommon calcium manganese silicate [CaMnSi2O6], sometimes containing iron, and is the dominant pyroxene from the Iron Cap Mine. The physical properties of johannsenite vary: color ranges from brown to black to gray to green to light blue to yellow to violet and others; it is translucent to transparent; the habit is massive to acicular needles to radiating aggregates to splintery; the luster varies from greasy to vitreous and the hardness is 6 (Mohs), although the acicular needle masses break apart easily. It usually forms in contact metamorphic zones associated with skarns. Johannsenite in my specimens is composed of massive green prismatic crystals or cleavage fragments (angles of 870 and 930 typical of pyroxenes). A second specimen of johannsenite from the Iron Cap has very dark green patches of acicular crystals.

Johannsenite is in solid solution with hedenbergite when the iron completely replaces the manganese [CaFeSi2O6] and with diopside as magnesium replaces the manganese [CaMgSi2O6]. In a process that somewhat confuses me, johannsenite alters to pink rhodonite (see Livi and Verblen, 1992, for a detailed report on this process.). The Iron Cap has produced hedenbergite associated with johannsenite but not diopside. 

Clear to white to reddish brown bustamite collected from the Langban ore body, Varmland, Sweden. Width FOV both photos ~ 5 mm.

Bustamite [CaMnSi2O6] is the high temperature polymorph of johannsenite and usually forms where manganese -rich ore bodies are subjected to metamorphism/metasomatism, often in skarns. The temperature break is ~830 degrees C. Bustamite is associated with johannsenite at the Franklin Mine in New Jersey but not at the Iron Cap. 


 

Crystals of manganbabingtonite with acicular crystals of johannsenite.  Collected at Iron Cap Mine.  Length of left largest crystal ~3 mm.

Finally, The Iron Cap Mine is also known for: 1) the magnificent crystals of manganbabingtonite, a rare Ca-Mn-Fe silicate [Ca2Mn2+Fe3+Si5O14(OH)] that is the manganese dominant analogue of babingtonite; and 2) nekoite, a rare, white, hydrated, calcium silicate [Ca3Si6O15 · 7H2O] that was originally confused with the “zeolite look-a-like”, okenite. Nekoite is an anagram of okenite! 


 

Nekoite clusters with unknown colored crystal. Width FOV ~3 mm.

Nekoite clusters with unknown colored crystal. Width FOV ~3 mm.

RFERENCES CITED

Goren, Yuval, www.microscopehistory.com; Retrieved December 2025.

Lauf, R.J., 2009, Collectors Guide to the Pyroxene Group: Schiffer Publishing, The Limited.

Simons, F. S. and E. Munson, 1963, Johannsenite from the Aravaipa mining district, Arizona: American Mineralogist, Vol. 48, No. 9-10.

Schaller, Waldemar T. 1938, Johannsenite, a new manganese pyroxene: American Mineralogist, Vol. 23, No. 9.

OF INTEREST (taken from a Memorial written by F.F. Pettijohn). Johannsen was a Man of Letters and a Polymath.

Johannsen received a B.S. degree in architecture from the University of Illinois in 1894.

He returned to school and received a B.S. in geology from the University of Utah in 1898. He then went to the Johns Hopkins University where he received his Ph.D. in petrography in i903.

Johannsen was pre-eminent in the field of microscopical petrography. He probably was, in a sense, the greatest and last of the American school of petrographers.

He is best known for his translation of Weinschenks' "Fundamental Principles of Petrology”.

His original contributions appeared in some 40 papers in the technical journals. Chief of these is his quantitative classification of the igneous rocks.

He set a standard of excellence that puts most contemporary scholarship to shame. In a sense Johannsen's scholarship was a kind of Iiterary scholarship.

He regarded a good rock description as something of permanent value

Johannsen was a collector at heart. At the time of his retirement, he left a superb collection of nearly 5,000 rock specimens at the University of Chicago. For most of these he had thin sections.

Johannsen's collecting extended to many fields outside of geology including postage stamps, commemorative half dollars, U. S. vice presidential autographs, first editions of Charles Dickens' works including the M EMORIALS 457, famous Phiz illustrations, and dime novels

He was an accomplished artist and when a student in Utah he drew the fashion plates for the Salt Loke City Herald.

He was also skilled in oil painting. He was a photographer of merit and a Leica enthusiast long before 35 mm cameras became popular.

This cultural heritage explains to some degree Johannsen's admiration of the best in German scholarship, his own mastery of German, and his unsurpassed works in the "Handbuch" tradition. 

MISC

In 1967 many Ph.D. granting institutions believed that one could not be a geology scholar without understanding and reading German. Therefore, I spent a year trying (without high success) to read German and pass the “reading test.” I passed it. Wow. Next came French, and a pass.

I and thankful to Professor Yuval Goren for allowing use of his microscope photo taken from his tome. www.microscopehistory.com This web site is an amazing and brilliant piece of work and readers should take a good look at this comprehensive history of microscopes.