SPAIN

Returning from his second voyage to the North-West passage in 1577 the privateer Martin Forbisher (1535-1594) carried as ballast for this three ships several hundred tons of gold bearing ore. After much heated debate at the assaying, involving the mathematician and alchemist John Dee (1527-1609), the true nature of the mineral was revealed as pyrite — fool’s gold.
Such is the quality of the yellow lustre from pyrite that many have be drawn to it over the centuries. Here it presents itself as a large crystal revealing the underlying cubic arrangement of iron and sulfur atoms; the microscopic hermetically revealed at the macroscopic level of a near-prefect Platonic solid. The cube is one of the purest geometrical and sculptural forms. The perfect shape of pyrite appears man made and is yet sculpted only by nature.