stephbg | Pretty rocks of the day: Amethyst

I'd be surprised if anyone here didn't know what amethyst was. It's the purple stuff, right? Common as mud? True, but it comes in a huge range of shades and--if you're prepared to look for them--many forms as well. Today's choice of purple was inspired by

catundra's reference to the rainbow ordered display of minerals in the South Australian Museum. I'd been thinking along similar lines and quickly realised that I didn't yet have purple. So here we are.

At one end of the spectrum you have your rough-as-guts chunks which make pretty outdoor rocks. You get plenty of colour, but not much in the way of delicacy:

I'm also a fan of rocks that look like other things, and this piece reminds me of clenched teeth:

Further in our series of rocks that resemble artworks, here is the amethyst answer to Damien Hirst's half a cow. I think it looks like a section through the head of a dragon. The brown sections are sinus cavities, and this dragon has surpriningly human-like purple molars.

Good for grinding the bones of unfortunate knights.

And it's also a pretty rock:

In the more standard crystalline forms you get a range of colour depth from deep purple through to the palest of lilac.

Deeper is considered better, and mediocre specimens are often treated to make them darker, but I like them all.

This one is classic middle-of-the-road stuff.

I particularly like the sharp clean edge on this crystal:

These suffered a lot of damage in TGSC, but I've not found any really compellingly nicer specimens to replace them. Even damaged mine appear to be nicer than the average, but they are *mine* after all :-)