Lapis lazuli

 

 

Lapis lazuli is a gemstone of the kind that might have come straight out of the Arabian Nights: a deep blue with golden inclusions of pyrites which shimmer like little stars.

This opaque, deep blue gemstone has a grand past. It was among the first gemstones to be worn as jewellery and worked on. At excavations in the ancient centres of culture around the Mediterranean, archaeologists have again and again found among the grave furnishings decorative chains and figures made of lapis lazuli – clear indications that the deep blue stone was already popular thousands of years ago among the people of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, Greece and Rome. It is said that the legendary city of Ur on the Euphrates plied a keen lapis lazuli trade as long ago as the fourth millennium B.C., the material coming to the land of the two great rivers from the famous deposits in Afghanistan. In other cultures, lapis lazuli was regarded as a holy stone. Particularly in the Middle East, it was thought to have magical powers. Countless signet rings, scarabs and figures were wrought from the blue stone which Alexander the Great brought to Europe. There, the colour was referred to as 'ultramarine', which means something like 'from beyond the sea'.

  

 

The most expensive blue of all time

The euphonious name is composed from 'lapis', the Latin word for stone, and 'azula', which comes from the Arabic and means blue. All right, so it's a blue gemstone - but what an incredible blue! The worth of this stone to the world of art is immeasurable, for the ultramarine of the Old Masters is nothing other than genuine lapis lazuli. Ground up into a powder and stirred up together with binding-agents, the marble-like gemstone can be used to manufacture radiant blue watercolours, tempera or oil-paints. Before the year 1834, when it became possible to produce this colour synthetically, the only ultramarine available was that valuable substance made from genuine lapis lazuli that shines out at us from many works of art today. Many pictures of the Madonna, for example, were created using this paint. But in those days, ultramarine blue was not only precious and so intense that its radiance outshone all other colours; it was also very expensive. But unlike all other blue pigments, which tend to pale in the light, it has lost none of its radiance to this very day. Nowadays, the blue pigment obtained from lapis lazuli is mainly used in restoration work and by collectors of historical paints.

The stone of friendship and truth

Lapis lazuli is regarded by many people around the world as the stone of friendship and truth. The blue stone is said to encourage harmony in relationships and help its wearer to be authentic and give his or her opinion openly.

 

 

Lapis lazuli is an opaque rock that mainly consists of diopside and lazurite. It came into being millions of years ago during the metamorphosis of lime to marble. Uncut, lapis lazuli is matt and of a deep, dark blue colour, often with golden inclusions and whitish marble veins. The small inclusions with their golden shimmer, which give the stone the magic of a starry sky, are not of gold as people used to think, but of pyrites. Their cause is iron. The blue colour comes from the sulphur content of the lazurite and may range from pure ultramarine to a lighter blue. At between 5 and 6 on the Mohs scale, this stone is among the less hard gemstones.

When the cutter turns up his nose ...

Many a cutter 'turns up his nose' when cutting lapis lazuli, for as soon as the stone comes into contact with the cutting-disc it gives off a typical smell. An experienced cutter can even tell from the odour how intense the colour is. When polishing this stone, he must handle it gently on account of its modest hardness and not subject it to much pressure. But there is no need for the wearer to worry: a lapis lazuli that has grown matt from having been worn too much can easily be repolished at any time. Lapis lazuli is often sealed with colourless wax or synthetic resin. As long as these substances are not mixed with any colouring agent, this sealing process simply has the effect of improving the stone's wearing qualities. Having said that, the stone should always be protected from acidic substances, and it should not be exposed to too much sunlight.

As they did more than 5000 years ago, the best raw stones still come from the steep Hindu Kush in the north-east of Afghanistan. The lumps of blue rock, extracted from the inhospitable mountains by blasting, are brought down into the valley in the summer months by mules. Nature also created deposits in Russia, to the west of Lake Baikal, and in the Chilean Andes, where the blue rock often has white or grey lime running through it. In smaller amounts, lapis lazuli is also found in Italy, Mongolia, the USA and Canada, Myanmar and Pakistan, but in really good qualities it is rare all over. That is why the prices of jewellery with lapis lazuli vary very widely, from luxurious to quite inexpensive. The prices of this gemstone are largely dependent on the beauty and intensity of the colour. The most popular is an intense, deep blue. Women with a pale complexion, however, often prefer the lighter shades of blue. Finely distributed crystals of pyrites which shimmer in gold and look like sequins will increase the value of the gemstone, whilst a restless, rough or blotchy grain will reduce it.

Lapis lazuli is a versatile and popular gemstone which has shown extraordinary stability in the turbulent tides of fashion. No wonder, since it has fascinated both men and women for thousands of years with its fabulous colour and those golden points of light formed by pyrites.

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 Lapis lazuli (pronounced /ˈlæpɪs ˈlæzjʉlaɪ/ or /ˈlæzjʉli/ LAP-iss LAZ-ew-lye/lee) (sometimes abbreviated to lapis) is a relatively rare semi-precious stone that has been prized since antiquity for its intense blue color.

  

Lapis lazuli has been mined from mines in the Badakhshan province of Afghanistan for over 6,000 years and there are sources that are found as far east as in the region around Lake Baikal in Siberia. Trade in the stone is ancient enough for lapis jewelry to have been found at Predynastic Egyptian sites, and as lapis beads at neolithic burials in Mehrgarh, the Caucasus, and even as far from Afghanistan as Mauritania.

Description

Lapis lazuli is a rock, largely formed from the mineral lazurite.

The main component of lapis lazuli is lazurite (25% to 40%), a feldspathoid silicate mineral with formula: (Na,Ca)8(AlSiO4)6(S,SO4,Cl)1-2. Most lapis lazuli also contains calcite (white), sodalite (blue), and pyrite (metallic yellow). Other possible constituents: augite; diopside; enstatite; mica; hauynite; hornblende, and nosean. Some lapis lazuli contains trace amounts of the sulfur-rich löllingite variety geyerite.

Lapis lazuli usually occurs in crystalline marble as a result of contact metamorphism.

The finest color is intense blue, lightly dusted with small flecks of golden pyrite. Stones with no white calcite veins and only small pyrite inclusions are more prized.[citation needed] Patches of pyrite are an important help in identifying the stone as genuine and do not detract from its value. Often, inferior lapis is dyed to improve its color, producing a very dark blue with a noticeable grey cast which may also appear as a milky shade.

Uses

Lapis takes an excellent polish and can be made into jewelry, carvings, boxes, mosaics, ornaments, and vases. In architecture it has been used for cladding the walls and columns of palaces and churches.

 

It was also ground and processed to make the pigment ultramarine for tempera paint and, more rarely, oil paint. Its usage as a pigment in oil paint ended in the early 19th century when a chemically identical synthetic variety, often called French ultramarine, became available.

Etymology

Lapis is the Latin for "stone" and lazuli the genitive form of the Medieval Latin lazulum, which is from the Arabic لازورد lāzaward, which is ultimately from the Persian لاژورد lāzhward, the name of a place where lapis lazuli was mined. The name of the place came to be associated with the stone mined there and, eventually, with its color. The English word azure, the French azur, the Italian azzurro, the Spanish and the Portuguese azul are cognates. Taken as a whole, lapis lazuli means "stone of Lāzhward".

Sources

The best lapis lazuli is found in limestone in the Kokcha River valley of Badakhshan province in northeastern Afghanistan, where the Sar-e-Sang mine deposits have been worked for more than 6,000 years. Afghanistan was the source of lapis for the ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations, as well as the later Greek and Roman; during the height of the Indus valley civilization about 2000 BC, the Harappan colony now known as Shortugai was established near the lapis mines.

In addition to the Afghan deposits, lapis has been extracted for many years in the Andes near Ovalle, Chile, where the deep blue stones compete in quality with those from Afghanistan. Other less important sources include the Lake Baikal region of Russia; Siberia; Angola; Burma; Pakistan; Canada; India; and in the USA in California and Colorado.

Historical usage

In ancient Egypt lapis lazuli was a favorite stone for amulets and ornaments such as scarabs; it was also used by the Assyrians and Babylonians for seals. Lapis jewelry has been found at excavations of the Predynastic Egyptian site Naqada (3300–3100 BC), and powdered lapis was used as eyeshadow by Cleopatra.

In ancient times, lapis lazuli was known as sapphire, which is the name that is used today for the blue corundum variety sapphire.

A Chinese carving inspired William Butler Yeats's poem "Lapis Lazuli".
 
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia