1.37 kg Dragon's Blood Jasper – Death Struggle

owhere, as Pliny the Elder wrote, are elephants bigger than in India, and there their mortal enemies live: dragons, so immense that they can easily coil around an elephant and bind it in their folds. This fight ends for both with death. The defeated elephant collapses and, with his weight, crushes the dragon that holds him clasped. What flowed there, the Indians knew as color: their vermilion, Pliny reports, was the sap of a dragon, crushed beneath the weight of dying elephants and mingled with the blood of both animals. No other red, he adds, captures the blood so faithfully in painting. This skull bears the traces of such a fight. On the right ear sits a bright, twisted, almost double-helix-shaped formation, like an ear ornament or like the noose with which the dragon wrapped around its opponent. On the other side lie black, porous areas like impact markings, as if some enormous weight had struck it. Over everything, an olive-green, mossy cloak spreads, interspersed with dots, stains, and veins in yellow-green, gray, and red. Around the mouth on the right side, however, the red gathers, as if he had bitten his lips and tongue under enormous pressure. It seems to run from mouth, eye, and ear at once—the blood of two foes that can no longer be separated. In the stone these opponents are indeed related. The green comes from epidote, the red from piemontite, named after Piedmont in Italy. Both belong to the same mineral family and differ mainly by a single element: where epidote contains iron and turns green, piemontite carries manganese, and that makes it red. Dragon and elephant died entwined. In this skull, green and red are two adversaries from the same blood. Material: Epidote-piemontite rock (trade name “Dragon’s Blood Jasper”) – green epidote with red piemontite as well as light quartz/chalcedony portions Origin: Western Australia Dimensions: 12.0 x 7.8 x 9.5 cm Weight: 1.37 kg Special features: Twisted, bright quartz/chalcedony formation at the right ear; black, porous, crater-like depressions (natural hollows) on the left side; red piemontite drawing around the mouth on the right side; olive-green, mossy base color with yellow-green and red inclusions

估價:$1.12

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