Ilvaite

specimen number:
1052788

location:
Koundouros, Serifos Island, Milos, South Aegean, Greece

description:
A wonderful example for the species from this famous old Greek locality. The specimen consists of a cluster of bright lustrous black terminated crystals of ilvaite. Some damage present as seen. Complete all around. The specimen comes with an antique label as shown at the end of the video. This label gives an acquisition date of 1928.

The Koundouros mining area, situated on the southwestern coast of Serifos Island in the Cyclades, Greece, is a notable historical locality tied to the island's rich iron-ore deposits. Geologically, the area is defined by a classic skarn zone formed during the Miocene epoch, when a granodiorite intrusion metasomatized local Attic-Cycladic basement rocks, including marbles and gneisses. This intense thermal and chemical interaction deposited massive iron oxides and silicates, primarily magnetite and hematite, within a highly varied mineral assemblage that includes well-crystallized prase quartz, andradite garnet, and pyroxene group minerals. Ancient Greeks and Romans carried out surface scratching and primitive mining at Koundouros, but systematic industrial exploitation did not begin until the late nineteenth century. Large-scale modern operations kicked off around the 1880s under French and Greek mining companies, expanding into underground galleries and coastal loading chutes, and production continued aggressively through both World Wars until declining reserves and changing global market conditions forced the permanent closure of the mines in the 1960s.

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