Blue Eyes Granite From Canada

Blue Eyes Granite From Canada

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Synonyms: Blu Eyes, Blue Eye, Blue Eys, Labrador Blue Eyes, Reflect Blue, Ten Mile Bay

Origin: Canada (Nain, Paul Island, Newfoundland, Labrador)

Technical and physical characteristics
Bulk density: 2,74 - 2,76 kg/dm³
Bending strength: 16,7 - 17,7 N/mm²
Compression breaking load: 192,3 - 195,2 N/mm²
Water absorption: 0,10 - 0,12 weight-%
Frost resistant
Polish constant

This stone internationally may be nominated as a granite however in the area of application of the European Standard (EN) this stone must be nominated as anorthosite.

Anorthosite: A phaneritic, intrusive igneous rock characterized by a predominance of plagioclase feldspar (90-100%), and a minimal mafic component (0-10%). Pyroxene, ilmenite, magnetite, and olivine are the mafic minerals most commonly present.

Local Geology: The Ten Mile Bay area is underlain by anorthosite of the Middle Proterozoic Nain Plutonic Suite (Ryan, 1991, 1995) which underlies approximately 20,000 km2 of northern Labrador. The Nain Plutonic Suite straddles the collisional contact between the Archean Nain Province and the Early Proterozoic Churchill Province and is one of several large anorthosite-granite massifs occurring north of the Grenville Front (Ryan, 1995). The suite is comprised of anorthositic, troctolitic, dioritic and granitic plutons which intruded between 1350 Ma (million years) and 1290 Ma (Ryan and Emslie, 1994). Most of the suite is internally undeformed. However, some of the suite shows evidence of deformation related to emplacement.

Comment: "The anorthosite being quarried at Ten Mile Bay is a very high value stone, due to its unique and extremely attractive appearance.... Blue chatoyant labradorite crystals averaging a little over 1 cm in size are set in a soft medium grey background composed of labradorite crystals which don’t show blue colour because of their orientation on the cut and polished surface being viewed. When viewed from every possible angle, almost all of the labradorite crystals display chatoyancy. The resulting effect is one of "winking blue eyes" when walking past a large slab of this stone. The subangular crystals are not tightly interlocking, but nicely separated by 0.5 to 2.0 mm white margins consisting of fine grained (crushed ?) labradorite. The stone’s extremely consistent appearance is enhanced by a subtle banding defined by discontinuous pyroxene-biotite foliae (up to 5%), which give gentle " movement" to the stone’s appearance, and diminish the effect of any rare imperfections.