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stephbgMy slab of Charoite (also known as Charolite) is from Siberia, and I have a funny feeling it didn't come to me quite by entirely legal means. I bought it from a well-established dealer in the US, but I read somewhere that it wasn't permitted to export raw slabs from Siberia, only tumbled stones. I tell myself that I couldn't have read such a thing, so perhaps it's just that it's only quite tricky to get an export permit.
Yeah.
AFAIK it's only mined in Siberia and China (not exactly far flung locales) and there's not much of it about. My first piece was a small tumbled stone I posted about here. That was sold to me as charolite. By the look of the pictures I took those in the light box. Have a sample:
When I eventually got a whole slab of the stuff through eBay (for a ridiculously small price compared to that original tumbled stone), the microscope didn't really do it any justice. I did a post here. Have a sample:
The beautifully dreamy and reflective components (a quality described as chatoyancy) were just blasted by the default microscope settings so this was something of a disappointment. Tonight was the first time I came back for another go. It will take ages to go through the shots but since I'm now a fan of the collage, you can have a quick contact-sheet version:
I'm looking forward to talking through some of these as individual images, because they are a treasure ground of hidden imagery and painterly references.
Yeah.
AFAIK it's only mined in Siberia and China (not exactly far flung locales) and there's not much of it about. My first piece was a small tumbled stone I posted about here. That was sold to me as charolite. By the look of the pictures I took those in the light box. Have a sample:
When I eventually got a whole slab of the stuff through eBay (for a ridiculously small price compared to that original tumbled stone), the microscope didn't really do it any justice. I did a post here. Have a sample:
The beautifully dreamy and reflective components (a quality described as chatoyancy) were just blasted by the default microscope settings so this was something of a disappointment. Tonight was the first time I came back for another go. It will take ages to go through the shots but since I'm now a fan of the collage, you can have a quick contact-sheet version:
I'm looking forward to talking through some of these as individual images, because they are a treasure ground of hidden imagery and painterly references.
