82g Ocean Jasper – Old from the Sea

Before the island Pharos, as Homer tells in the fourth book of the Odyssey, lived Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea, who knows the depths of all seas. Every noon he emerged from the waves, counted his seals on the shore, and lay down among them to rest. Menelaus, on his way home from Troy, was detained there and tried to wring the way back to his homeland from him. Proteus’ daughter Eidothea dug them and their companions a trench in the sand and covered them with freshly peeled seal skins. When they seized the old man, he transformed into a lion, a snake, a panther, and a mighty wild boar, then into flowing water and a densely leaved tree. Yet they did not let go until he took back his own form and gave them an answer. This skull also harbors many shapes within itself and remains as down-to-earth as the sand of that shore. It reveals the sea bottom in all its variety, pleasantly polished and as if aged by the water. On both sides a chalky, pale white spreads out. Upon it rest sand-colored, ochre, and rust-brown patches like iron companions of the seafloor. Tiny white spheres sit there like air bubbles that never reached the surface. Across the skull runs a pale-yellow, finely speckled stripe, adding another form to the image. Ocean Jasper is, despite its name, not a classic jasper, but a silicified rhyolite, i.e., volcanic rock that has been penetrated by silica afterwards. Its spherical “eyes” are spherulites: they formed when mineral fibers grew radially around tiny nuclei. The chalky white is opaque chalcedony, and the warm sand and rust tones come from iron oxides. The material comes exclusively from Marovato on the northwest coast of Madagascar, whose veins today are considered exhausted. Material: Ocean Jasper – silicified rhyolite with orbicular chalcedony pattern (not a classic jasper) Origin: Marovato, Analalava District, Madagascar Dimensions: 5.1 x 3.9 x 3.3 cm Weight: 82 g Special features: Chalk-white base on both skull sides with sand-, ochre- and rust-colored patches; small white spherical eyes (spherulites); pale-yellow finely speckled stripe across the skull top; occasional delicate reddish patches on the nasal ridge and eye socket

估價:$1.12

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