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| Best of Collectors |
Dr. André ROSTENNE, Veterinary surgeon
André Rostenne, while teenager, hesitated between Veterinary studies and Geology. Passionate by Mother Nature, he rapidly embraced two hobbies: he loved animals but also developed a sharp interest in minerals.
His choice was rather prosaic as he concentrated his interests to Veterinary, assuming that mineralogy could better fit as a hobby when ensured by a decent level of wealth.
In the beginning of his career, thanks to his frank and funny character, André was extremely lucky to become a good friend of the true precursor of the Belgian mineral collectors at the time, namely Canon PONCELT, priest, formely Dean of Bouillon (Belgian Luxemburg province), retired and living in the small village of Louette-St-Pierre.
The Canon taught André the first rudiments of collecting and soon impregnated him with genuine tastes of gathering real mineralogy for which he never refused his wisest advices. When the priest passed away, André purchased from his heirs the whole collection, as life annuity. The collection was famous for the time and involved, among others, numerous splendid and multi coloured fluorites from Seilles (small village along the Meuse valley, in between Namur and Liege, Belgium) but also a host of extraordinary blue, green or purple apatites from Panasqueira, the best known classic locality at that time, not forgetting the elusive ferberites from the same place.
Andrés merit was to seize this unique chance that provided him with the really best fluorite samples from Seilles. Not really known outside of the country, nor academically studied, this Belgian quarry is by now recognized as a really unique fluorite deposit on the world scale.
At the first glance, the outer morphology of the rough crystals is not particularly attractive as the faces and edges are currently ill defined, exhibiting an unattractive corroded surface due to natural weathering conditions occurring within this limestone based soil. However, when cleaved or cut, the interior of these masses suddenly exhibits an unusual transparency involving an extraordinary combination of all the rainbow colours. The chunks found during the golden period (end of the 1960's) were rounded and big, weighing currently around 5 kg or more.
Some beginner collectors used to cleave the rough stones into splendid octahedrons but this resulted in an important loss of material. Other started to exchange the best looking rough pieces with Swiss "strahlers" or lapidary dealers at Idar Oberstein, who would further cut and polish them into the most glittering jewels.
André Rostenne was wise and expert enough to enlighten this unique colour contrast as natural design in a variety of differently shaded fluorites without having to cut or cleave them. A judicious enlightening with various lamps "from behind" allowed him to show, among other figure combinations, the famous "Mercedes cross" of the fluorite (so called by Dr Eric Asselborn , the famous French mineral collector). Also passionate by the famous limousines from Stuttgart (his preferred car), André always proudly compared the natural cruciform design sitting in his beloved fluorites with the similar universal symbol of Mercedes trade mark.
André also used to field-collect numerous calcite samples from many of the famous quarries in Belgium. He also soon joined the AGAB association http://users.swing.be/agab/, the oldest mineralogical club in Belgium (along with MKA from Antwep) and started to readily complete his first calcite acquisitions. This suite rapidly became one of the most outstanding and complete Belgian calcite crystals collections (in terms of morphology and crystallographical variations). Part of this collection was recently enlightened as a fully illustrated article entitled "Calcites from Mont-sur-Marchienne, Belgium", published in "Le Règne Minéral", Vol. 42 (2000), pp 17-46.
André Rostenne continues to develop his strong interest in minerals by acquiring regularly many other classical mineral pieces from all around the world. To cite a few, along with Pansqueira and its suite of apatites and ferberites, his collection comprises many outstanding and finely selected crystals from Brasil (tourmalines, aquamarines or topaz), Namibia, North America (tourmalines, rhodochrosites), Ukraine (heliodors or blue topaz from Wolodarsk) or the best of the pegmatite minerals recently brought up from Pakistan of Afghanistan.
Roger WARIN.
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Andre ROSTENNE (Photo : Roger WARIN ©)Click On Picture To Go Back.
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