Fakebusters: Azurite and Malachite

Now this is a heck of a fake, dear readers, because it is so common. The fakery of azurite in malachite is also often called lapis lazuli in malachite, which is ironic as the two do not occur anywhere near each other.

This is our first fake, and ironically it isn't even the correct colours! This blobby mess of light and dark blue is probably... plastic? Resin? Who knows!

The second fake at least has a little green in it, however the morphology is still miles off what it should be for malachite or azurite. They would certainly not occur in disparate blobs like this.

This attempt at least has better morphology, with the layers resembling malachite, however the colours are still not right. The odd presence of yellow is really unusual too, as you will see when we cover the real deal.

This is our last fake for the day, with dark blue and green layers. once again it is the artificial resin, or perhaps even polymer clay? Without taking a closer look, I will not know for sure. 

This one is the real deal, and rather less glamorous! But this is what the natural stone of azurite (darker blue), malachite (green) and chrysocolla (lighter blue), which all occur naturally together. There is even some cuprite, the deep red components. Some specimens will show greater differentiation between the colours, however this is a great one so see how naturally they can occur.

Lastly we have a beautiful raw specimen, so you can see how amazing natural malachite and azurite crystals can be! These specimens often occur in China, although other areas of the world have them too.