As the vast majority of iron meteorites are prosaically shaped, an opportunity exists to showcase their internal crystalline splendor by fashioning slices, cubes, spheres — and the unique presentation now offered: a work of art intended to convey that imperfect perfection is the essence of life. While a narrow highly polished band delimits the perimeter of each triangular face, what makes this geometric form especially unique is the embellishment of schreibersite at the left and bottom margins. Many researchers believe schreibersite was a significant source of phosphorus — delivered to Earth billions of years ago via asteroid impacts — to enable life.

Seymchan meteorites were first found in a part of Siberia made infamous as the remote location of Stalin’s gulags and were named after a nearby town. While Seymchan is a pallasite, unlike most pallasites, the dispersion of olivine crystals in Seymchan is extremely heterogeneous. Some specimens are olivine rich (see lot 30) and some are olivine poor (see lot 24); some have no olivine whatsoever. This is an example of the latter.

Seymchan originated at the mantle/core boundary of an asteroid that shattered following a cataclysmic collision with another asteroid. Following what may have been repeated collisions in space, a large mass was serendipitously bumped into an Earth-crossing orbit.

In honor of the second person to have noticed it, the prominent latticework seen here is most often referred to as a Widmanstätten pattern. It is indicative of an extremely slow cooling rate that provided sufficient time — millions of years — for the two primary alloys to orient into the present crystalline structure. As the only places where this can occur are in the core of a differentiated asteroid, this pattern is diagnostic in the identification of an iron meteorite. Iron meteorites in different groups originate from different asteroids, and as a result of varying compositions and cooling rates, they have distinct patterns (see lots 13 and 53).

A few years prior to Count Alois von Beckh Widmanstätten having noticed this structure, an English researcher working in Italy, William Thomson, discovered this pattern and wrote a scientific paper about the same. Regrettably, Thomson was cut-off from his English-speaking colleagues as a result of the Napoleonic Wars, and Napoleon’s invasion of Naples resulted in Thomson having to flee. He died shortly thereafter, prior to the Count’s independent discovery.

While Thomson deserves acknowledgement, so does Russian artisan Alexei Kovalev, who rendered this olivine-free section of a Seymchan meteorite into the otherworldly equilateral triangular form now seen. Kovalev’s inspiration in this piece is that seeming perfection only exists if graced with strands of the marvel of life. With the meteorite’s natural octahedral lattice contained in a triangular design, this is an intersection of the old and new; a carving of an artifact that originates from our early solar system that is older than Earth itself.

Christie's would like to thank Dr. Alan E. Rubin at the Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles for his assistance in preparing this catalogue.

137 x 155 x 23mm (5.33 x 6 x 0.1 in.) and 1.808 kg (4 lbs)