History
The name records a shape. Its crystals grow as thin, wedge-shaped plates with a sharp edge, and an early mineralogist thought they looked like the blade of an axe. So in 1797 the French crystallographer René Just Haüy called the mineral axinite, from the Greek axina — axe — in allusion to that habit.
The name arrived late. For most of the eighteenth century the stone had no settled identity of its own. In 1781 Johann Gottfried Schreiber filed it loosely as a kind of schorl, under the French label Espèce de Schorl. Schorl was an old catch-all term for dark, glassy crystals. Cataloguing crystal forms in 1785, Romé de l'Isle split it by colour into schorl violet and schorl transparent lenticulaire — the lens-shaped transparent schorl. In 1788 the German mineralogist Abraham Gottlob Werner named it Thumerstein, after Thum in Saxony where good crystals were found; the name was later anglicised to thumite.
Other names followed before Haüy's stuck. Jean Claude de la Métherie proposed yanolite in 1792, and Blumenberg called it glasschörl — glassy schorl — in 1799. None survived. Haüy's axinite did, and it became the group name once chemistry revealed that several closely related minerals share the structure.
That chemistry is a calcium-iron-aluminium borosilicate — a silicate built around silicon and oxygen, with boron worked into the framework. The members differ in which metal dominates. In 1909 the American mineralogist Waldemar T. Schaller renamed the iron-rich member ferroaxinite, marking iron's lead in the formula. The modern label came in 2007, when the International Mineralogical Association recoded it with the cation suffix axinite-(Fe).
Industrial & practical applications
Axinite-(Fe) is not an industrial raw material. Although its structure carries boron, no source records it being mined or processed for that element, and it has no role in manufacturing.
Its only practical use is ornamental. When a crystal is transparent and the usual clove-brown colour is clean, a lapidary will sometimes cut it as a gem. The brown-to-violet, plum-blue stones it yields are prized chiefly by collectors and gem enthusiasts, not set in everyday jewellery. The mineral remains a cabinet and gemstone curiosity rather than a commodity.
Where it forms, where it's found
- Geological setting
Low to high grade regionally metamorphosed rocks, contact metamorphic rocks, pegmatites.
- Type locality
- Saint-Christophe-en-Oisans
- Grenoble
- Isère
- Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
- France
Physical
- Hardness
- 1Talc
- 2Gypsum
- 3Calcite
- 4Fluorite
- 5Apatite
- 6Orthoclase
- 7Quartz
- 8Topaz
- 9Corundum
- 10Diamond
- Transparency
- Transparent · Translucent
- Colour
- Brown · clove-brown · plum blue · pearl gray
- Streak
- White
- Tenacity
- brittle
- Cleavage
- Distinct/Good
Good on (100) Poor on (001) (110) (011)
- Fracture
- Irregular/Uneven · Conchoidal
- Density
- 3.25 g/cm³
Optical
- Optical type
- Biaxial (-) · 2V measured = 69 – 87° · 2V calc = 62 – 82°
- Refractive index
- 1.672 – 1.704
- Surface relief
- High
- Principal indices
- nα 1.672 – 1.693 · nβ 1.677 – 1.701 · nγ 1.681 – 1.704
- Dispersion
- strong
Crystallography
- Cell parameters
- a = 7.1437(4) Å · b = 9.1898(6) Å · c = 8.9529(4) Å
- Cell angles
- α = 91.857(6) ° · β = 98.188(5) ° · γ = 77.349(4) °
- Ratio a:b:c
- 1 : 1.286 : 1.253
- Z
- 2
- Morphology
Flattened, axe head shaped, granular, massive
Chemical composition
Synonyms
- Axiniet-(Fe)
- Axinitt-(Fe)
- Feraxinit
- Feraxinita
- Feraxinite
- Feroaksinito
- Ferro-axinite
In other languages
- German
- Axinit-(Fe)
- Spanish
- Axinita- · Axinita-(Fe)
- Italian
- Axinite- · Axinite-(Fe) · Ferroaxinite
- Chinese
- 铁斧石
Classification
9.BD.20
- 9SilicatesClass
- 9.BSorosilicatesDivision
- 9.BDSi2O7 groups, with additional anions; cations in tetrahedral [4] and greater coordinationGroup
- 9.BD.20Axinite-(Fe)Species
56.02.02.01
- 56Sorosilicates Si2o7 Groups, with Additional O, Oh, F and H2oClass
- 56.02Si2O7 Groups and O, OH, F, and H2O with cations in [4] and/or >[4] coordinationType
- 56.02.02Axinite groupGroup
- 56.02.02.01Axinite-(Fe)Species
17.5.47
- 17Silicates Containing other AnionsClass
- 17.5BorosilicatesGroup
- 17.5.47Axinite-(Fe)Species
Group, growth & confusion
Literature, links & citation
- 1796Haüy, René Just (1796) Extrait du Traité Élémentaire de Minéralogie que le C.en Haüy s'occupe de rédiger. Journal des mines, 5 (28). 249-334
- 1906Anderson, C. (1906) Mineralogical notes. No. III. Axinite, petterdite, crocoite, and datolite. Records of the Australian Museum, 6. 133-144 doi:10.3853/j.0067-1975.6.1906.998 DOI: 10.3853/j.0067-1975.6.1906.998
- 1909Dana, Edward S., Ford, William E. (1909) A System of Mineralogy - Second Appendix to the Sixth Edition of Dana's System of Mineralogy. John Wiley & Sons.
- 1980Pringle, Ian J., Kawachi, Yosuke (1980) Axinite mineral group in low-grade regionally metamorphosed rocks in southern New Zealand. American Mineralogist, 65 (11-12) 1119-1129
- 1981Swinnea, J. Steven, Steinfink, Hugo, Miron, L. E. Rendon-Diaz, Vega, and S. Enciso de la (1981) The crystal structure of a Mexican axinite. American Mineralogist, 66 (3-4) 428-431
@misc{mineral2026,
author = {Mineral Index editorial board},
title = {Axinite-(Fe) — Mineral Index},
year = {2026},
url = {https://mineralindex.org/minerals/axinite-fe-1459},
note = {Accessed 2026-05-11}
}