 Fluid World
£25.00
The name Fluorite comes from the Latin meaning 'to flow'. Having a low melting point, it was important in smelting processes. Thanks to the translucency of this image, scanned with reflected light, it evokes a liquid, underwater world - a fluidity perfectly in keeping with its name. The image is a fraction of a 4cm specimen of Fluorite.
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Paesina Landscape
£25.00
Paesina - 'landscape' - Stone is a limestone from Tuscany that was formed during the Cretaceous period by water mixing with oxides of various minerals to create these intricate, landscape-like colours and patterns. Not exactly a Tuscan landscape, but a compelling image all the same full of fascinating details.
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Water Flight
£25.00
Quartz is the most abundant material in the earth's crust, and in ideal conditions forms a perfectly clear six-sided prism. This is one of the most evocative images conjured by other minerals and gases squeezing into fractures of the quartz when in its molten state. What it reminds you of is for you to decide, but water seems to be part of it.
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Stone Roses
£25.00
This Rhodochrosite is a stalactitic formation found uniquely in an old Inca silver mine in Catamarca, Argentina. Cut cross-sections reveal these highly attractive concentric light and dark rose coloured circles. Many minerals produce formations that resemble flowers, but none feels more like a 'mineral blossom' than this.
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Creation Of The World
£25.00
This wonderful image suggests different things to different people, but what you can be sure of is that it is a very rare form of Ocean Jasper found only along the shores of northeast Madagascar. It was discovered in 1999 - and mined out only seven years later. It always features earth-shaped, spherical inclusions, but usually not as evocative as this one. The fact that the mineral is called Ocean Jasper makes it even more attractive.
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Brazilian Enigma
£25.00
This is a minute detail of a Brazilian agate, which often feature this kind of complex, hard-to-explain formation. The image was scanned with transmitted light, which gives it this striking colour that highlights the enigmatic "design".
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Thunder Egg
£25.00
In Oregon, the major source of Thunder Eggs, it is often claimed that the name comes from the native Indians' belief that they were thrown by the gods during storms. What's certain is that Thunder Eggs typically form in tennis-ball-sized pockets during volcanic activity. The centre is generally filled with agate, jasper, opal, or, as here, with quartz.
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Vision Of Hell?
£25.00
This is one of the most powerful and remarkable of all the agate images, and one that utterly defies explanation as to how it was created.
People see very different things in it: is it a vision of hell? Is that a rearing cobra in the centre? Others see faces in several places. And some find it simply intriguing, but ignore it you can't!
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Waves On A Beach
£25.00
Looking at this image, can you almost imagine yourself sitting on a beach watching the waves roll in?
More prosaically, the banded effect is created by liquid silica flooding into a space in the molten agate.
Quite how super heated minerals manage to create such a cool and aquaeous image is still difficult to understand. Another mystery of nature.
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Beyond
£25.00
Are we airborne, looking down on clouds and mountains, or on a cliff looking out to the horizon across a vast beach bathed in the golden light of the setting sun? One of the beauties of mineral 'landscapes' such as this is their very ambiguity, allowing us to continually reinterpret them.
Tiny quantities of impurities and changing conditions as the layers build up can lead, as here, to formations that are strikingly like land- and seascapes.
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Chinese Landscape
£25.00
Some Paesina Stone images bear an uncanny resemblance to the Tuscan landscapes from which they originate, but here - partly thanks to the vertical shape - it feels altogether more reminiscent of Chinese paintings.
Paesina - 'landscape' - Stone is a limestone from Tuscany that was formed during the Cretaceous period by water mixing with oxides of various minerals to create these intricate, landscape-like colours and patterns.
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Magic Forest
£25.00
A "Disney" magic forest is the idea that has stuck to this image, but perhaps you see something different?This beautifully marked and veined specimen of Serpentite has inclusions of other crystals to create these effects. It comes from China.
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Another World
£25.00
What are those massive structures on this yet-to-be-discovered planet? Or is it a "Tibetan religious landscape" with a combination of temples and tree-topped hills.
The basic structure of the concentric bands of agate can be seen, but quite what gave rise to the unique details is a matter for speculation.
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Foggy Evening
£25.00
Where many level-banded agates conjure up sea-and-sky scenes, thanks to its distortion and colouration this image seems to have come from another planet.
Or perhaps this is a British coastline with search lights piercing a foggy evening as painted by Turner?
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King Solomon's Mines
£25.00
The wonderful green colour of malachite results from weathering of copper ores found in limestone, and was used as an artist's pigment until around 1800.
It has been mined for over 3,000 years at the so-called 'King Solomon's Mines' in Israel, and this image is reminiscent of the vaulted roof of an underground cave, or perhaps the exquisite vaults of the Alhambra palace in Granada.
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Forest Snow Storm
£25.00
Dendrites - named after the Greek word for leaf - are among the most common patterns in nature, but rarely with such evocative results as in this 'Storm in a Coniferous Forest'.
Quartz is the most abundant material in the earth's continental crust, and in ideal conditions forms a perfectly clear six-sided prism.
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Tourmaline
£25.00
It is not surprising that this complex but simply beautiful image is popular.
Tourmaline is a crystal silicate mineral that includes aluminium, iron, magnesium, sodium, lithium, and potassium, and these create the wide variety of colours.
Surprisingly, however, this image was taken from a specimen that appears to be jet-black to the naked eye.
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River Chara
£25.00
Charoite was discovered in Siberia in the 1970s, and is named after the Russian 'chary' which means'charms' or 'magic', although some claim the name comes from the River Chara.
Charoite is always purple in colour, and often has this distinctive swirling appearance that evokes an aerial view of a purple stream.
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Moonlit Forest
£25.00
Labradorite (discovered along the coast of Labrador in 1805) is grey or dark green in dim light, but when brightly lit turns sea blue, gold and green.
This image is perhaps reminiscent of a painting of moonlit trees. It's certainly very evocative of something!
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Madagascar
£25.00
Ocean Jasper, the wonderful name for this mineral only found along the shores of northeast Madagascar, was discovered in 1999 - and mined out only seven years later.
Appropriately, this image seems to recall an aerial view of forest, beach and coral-reef - perhaps in Madagascar.
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