Talk:Pyrophyllite

Uttar Pradesh
Around Varnasi (formerly Benares, aka Kashi), on the Ganges in Uttar Pradesh, India, there is (or was two decades ago) a handicraft industry of turning a very soft, highly colorful stone into boxes and vases on woodturning lathes with high speed steel tools, and also carving it with bits turning abut 20,000 RPM inserted in small homemade (20 years ago, anyhow) flexible shaft handpieces. One of the manufacturers, to the best of my recollection, told me the material was actually pyrophyllite quarried near Mirzapur, though it was often casually referred to as talc, which is equally soft, but a different mineral.

In additional to the boxes and statuettes above, the stone was used in manufacturing, er, chilums and other "smoking" accessories.

There is another soft stone that is also carved in fine detail, usually into small statues, to be found in Orissa -- it is grey and resembles limestone-- but I believe is, or may be, a different mineral.

Maybe someone wants to follow up with the Indian craft authorities or Handicraft Museum in New Delhi to get further details? The facts need a further check before adding to the main article.

Kisii stone carvings in Wikipedia are also reported to be pyrophyllite -- see Steatite towards bottom of the article.

There is also an industry of turning thick-walled black stone bowls in Korea (dolsot) which are used for cooking, and/or food is added to the heated bowls and brought to the table sizzling (see http://www.yummyletter.com/newsletters/cook-i12.html ). A characteristic of the bowls is that they resist cracking under both heating and thermal shock when food is then added. The material is soft like pyrophyllite but is reported to be agalmatolite. which may be a variety of soapstone, or steatite or may be pyrophyllite ( Pagodite ).

This whole area needs a mineralogist to sort through it and get everything clearly differentiated or unified by what the materials actually are.

Dolsot, the Korean stone bowls (see Bibimbap), probably deserve an article of their own.

--FurnaldHall (talk) 18:23, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Space group
Per, it seems like the modern sources all make this mineral triclinic with inversion (space group C$\overline{1}$) and only a source clear back from 1934 gives in monoclinic symmetry. I've left it for now, particularly since mindat.org repeates the monoclinic classification, but more scholarly and up-to-date sourcing is needed. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 04:18, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Old Mine
I just noticed that there is a phrophyllite mine noted at 33.031, -117.162 on old USGS maps (US Geological Survey). I was curious what that is and came here. I see other locations listed, so I thought I'd mention it. There is a golf course there now, so I don't know if you want to add it to your list or not. I imagine that the ore is still down there below the ground.FatBear1 (talk) 16:23, 1 December 2023 (UTC)