The 21st Annual Pegmatite Workshop

Granite pegmatites are intriguing geological structures to study. Found worldwide, they have been examined and mined for commercial, hobbyist and academic reasons for centuries. Even with this history, pegmatites are still considered difficult to comprehend. They are individually diverse in their structure, mineralogy, and paragenesis, but simultaneously there are enough similarities between all pegmatites to be worthy of comparison and study by the miner, mineral collector and academic alike. Whether your interest in pegmatites is purely academic or simply to learn where to look for mineral specimens in these structures, an understanding of pegmatites is crucial and can require years of questioning others, weeding through the literature, independent study and field work. To speed this process along, studying with experienced instructors can be most beneficial, quickly adding to your knowledge base and comprehension. But finding a teacher to work with is difficult, an expert pegmatologist almost impossible.

Introducing The Maine Pegmatite Workshop - 2024.  We are pleased to invite you to attend a unique opportunity to study granitic pegmatites with expert pegmatologists . Our objective is to present a comprehensive, hands-on, educational Workshop on Pegmatites. The current information and theories about pegmatite paragenesis, mineralogy and petrology will be presented, guiding our registrants from the basics, through to the current theories and research.

By encouraging interaction, open discussion, and exchange of information with the faculty, they also want to learn from you. We have limited the registration to about 25 people, so there is as much interaction as possible with and between everyone. Although the Workshop  discusses pegmatites on a worldwide basis, Maine is an ideal location for the Workshop with its abundance of pegmatites, its mineral wealth and the availability of freshly exposed pegmatite quarries and minerals. We will be visiting four of these pegmatite quarries as field examples. We accomplish all of this in an intensive four day period, where each day, half of the time is in the classroom and the other half is out in the field. To add to this experience, there will be time set aside for your own field collecting at these closed locations.

The faculty has produced  a newly revised and updated second edition of our  textbook  about pegmatites-  PEGMATOLOGY 2nd edition. It is full of information not easily found anywhere else. It is our Workshop course book and is entitled "Pegmatology 2nd edition: Pegmatite Mineralogy, Petrology and Paragenesis." Full of details which have been gathered specifically to compliment this Workshop, it is a text you can use for many years. As a registrant, you will receive a copy, included in the registration fee. We have taken our registrants interests, opinions and comments each year and tailored our Workshop to explore as many topics as we can in four intensive days. We invite you to join us in 2024 and enjoy this experience.