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Undistilled — Malachite
Published: 2009-08-16 01:19:39 +0000 UTC; Views: 2261; Favourites: 52; Downloads: 57
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Description
(please click image for full view)Title: Malachite
Medium: Digital Photography
Photographer: Aaron J. Greenblatt
Camera Type: Panasonic DMC-LZ7 Lumix 7.2 MP
Editing: Edited in PhotoShop 7.0 for color accuracy, size, and to apply copyright and border.
Location: Photograph taken at the 2008 Southeastern Michigan Gem and Mineral Show at the Southgate Civic Center in Southgate, Michigan. Show hosted by the Midwest Mineralogical & Lapidary Society .
Description: Sitting out in the open in a cardboard box on a dealer's table was this six-inch-wide polished piece of malachite from Shaba Province, Congo. Recently, lots of malachite has been mined in the Congo, polished, and then sold at mineral shows and rock stores here in the US. Often these pieces are quite large and they often show swirly patterns of light and dark green intermixed with black matrix.
This particular piece was selling for $25 - which is a bit expensive considering the amount of this material currently available on the market. At another show, I was able to meet one of the Congolese importers. He had an entire three tables full of nothing but these polished malachite pieces - some of them weighing more than 50 pounds! Suffice it to say, the display was quite impressive.
About Malachite Uses: Malachite was used as a mineral pigment in green paints from antiquity until about 1800. Pigments made from malachite are moderately lightfast (not affected or faded by light), yet very sensitive to acids. As with malachite itself, these pigments often varied in color from light to dark green. Today, natural malachite pigment has been replaced by its synthetic form, verditer (two manufactured synthetic carbonates of copper) - amongst other synthetics.
About Famous Malachite Uses: Malachite is also used for decorative purposes, such as in the Malachite Room in the Hermitage (a famous museum of art and culture situated in the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russia). The unique embellishments of the room include columns, pilasters, fire-place trimmings and decorative vases - all made of malachite in the "Russian mosaic" technique.
The colossal tazza (a shallow saucer-like dish) in the Linda Hall Library, in Kansas City, Missouri, is one of the largest pieces of malachite in North America. It was presented by Czar Nicholas II to August Heckscher (a multimillionaire and a philanthropist who served as President John Kennedy's Special Consultant on the Arts - the first White House cultural advisor) in 1910 and given to the Linda Hall Library in 1972 by Mrs. Helen Spencer. To this day, it stands as the focal point in the center of the Main Reading Room of the library.
Information Sources:
[link] (wiki - tazza)
[link] (wiki - malachite)
[link] (wiki - malachite room)
[link] (mindat - malachite)
Legal: Copyright © Aaron J. Greenblatt. All rights reserved. Commercial use prohibited. This image and commentary may not be used for any reason without expressed written consent.
Please click here to view my photography work located in my Gallery.
Please click here for images of my glass work located in my other Gallery.
Please click here for images of my glass studio located in my other Scraps.
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Comments: 14
I have an aunt that used to attend SCA events, and she could make really pretty jewelry with stones like the one presented.
But she told me something about Malachite and I'm not exactly sure if it's true or not. She said that it could be used as a poison and was used in Medieval times.
As I said, I'm not very sure it is true, and she could have just bullshitted me.
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Malachite is toxic, but only in raw form. I've never heard of any cases of polished Mals giving people any trouble. Hope this helped.
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I can't confirm or deny if any person was actually ever poisoned to death by malachite. A product called "malachite green" (a chloride salt) is used as a toxic poison by those who care for fish and fish tanks. You can read about it here: Fishdoc.com
However, "malachite green" is an organic compound. And although it is called malachite, the compound is not related to the actual mineral malachite — the name just comes from the similarity of color.
It should also be noted that most copper-based minerals contain some amount of arsenic in their matrix. So if you were to cut them without a mask for protection and breath in the dust, the arsenic could poison you over a long period of time. This of course is mitigated by using lubricants (like oil and water) during the cutting, grinding, and polishing stages.
And then there's the fact that copper is toxic to living things in large quantities. But then again, so is just about anything ingested in large quantities.
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Yeah, we're considered the top predator, but we are also so frail.
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Looks like a fractal that got impacted into a rock, and also resembles kind of the natural lichen formations you can see on sidewalks or on trees. Beautiful capture and nice, detailed description. Never knew it was used in pigments, then a synthetic was used afterwards.
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Thanks!
I try to provide lots of information in my Artist's Comments section so that viewers can have a better appreciation and understanding of what they're looking at.
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Thank you.
Malachite is one of the more "photogenic" of minerals - with its alternating rings of green.
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what was the texture like on this piece...it looks like whoever polished it left it very bubbly
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The texture was very smooth and glass-like. It is rounded in places but not what I would consider to still be all that bubbly. The patterns within the stone actually throw off the eye a bit into thinking it would feel more bubbly than it really does. So it's like an optical illusion almost.
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I saw some of those at the mineral place I was at too!!
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They're quite ubiquitous these days.
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Indeed it is.
Though, as with most minerals, it's much prettier in real life.
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