Amber: the natural time capsule

“The Spider, Flye, and Ant, being tender dissipable substances falling into Amber, are therein buryed, finding therein both a Death, and Tombe, preserving them better from Corruption than a Royal Monument.” Francis Bacon

 Along with pearl but unlike other precious gems, Amber is not a stone – it is actually fossilized tree sap from pre-historical pine trees.  Sometimes the sap oozed over live bugs or small animals and hardened, freezing them forever (unless maybe 10,000 years later it’ssold as a souvenir and subsequently broken by a clumsy child?)

Hematite: the stone of BLOOD

hematite (or haematite) is easily identifiable as a heavy, cold and mirror-like grey/silver stone.  That is actually red.  We know that it’s red because it leaves red streaks and because when it is ground down it becomes a red powder, known as rouge (because it’s red, don’tcha know?)

Blue Stone of Heaven

Lapis Lazuli… “a gemstone straight out of fairy tales of the Arabian Nights: deepest blue with golden shining Pyrite inclusions which twinkle like little stars.”*

Even its name means, “blue stone from heaven“: