FMF Minerals Gallery

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Nearly 5 cm long wires of so-called "Schlotsilber" (chimney silver) from Schlema mining district, Erzgebirge, Saxony. Not all dubious silver samples without matrix are manmade in a narrower sense. Some of them have been found when the chimneys of the smelters (f.e. at Freiberg and Schlema-Schneeberg district, Erzgebirge, Saxony) got pulled down. The silver sublimated on the inside of the chimneys. It is told that big chimney fragments fully overgrown by large silver wires have been found... But there´s nothing about ever been published and actually I never saw such "matrix chimney silver". Moreover you don´t see such loose wires that often; characteristic is their luster - the shown sample is, I think, 50 years old and there is no black tarnish on. (Author: Andreas Gerstenberg)