I'm cutting the very, very last of this really rare material called Victoria Stone.  It's a reconstituted mineral that is chemically similiar to jade, but was made by a Japanese scientist in the 1970's.  It has a cystrallizing agent in it which causes these tremendous actinolite chatoyant patterns.  Really incredible stuff.  Was only made for a short while and has not been commercially available in 25+ years.  I made thse two pieces out of tiny slabs I bought back in the early 80's.... in black   and I'm not sure if this color was classified as "reddish purple" or as "chocolate" by the manufacturer....   and this black onyx pendant with drusy quartz crystals on the end of it was a real challenge to get polished nicely.  It's about an inch square with 1.5mm drill holes at either upper corner...   and I've been introducing new colors of bowlerite!  A "jade green" like in this chatoyant wedge...   and I also really like this pearly charcoal color I call "Black Pearl Bowlerite"    That's it for now!  Thanks for looking! 

 

 Hi all, going a bit nuts getting ready for Tucson!  I'm just driving and help my  lady friend-patron from Scotland shop (taste & security in one big, burly, gay package!), as I have ALL the rocks I need (and no money) and I have no desire to do a show in Tucson when I could just be listing on eBay.  but still, I'll be away from the studio and not making any money for 3 weeks so I'm trying to get as much done this week as possible.  Also last week I went to my storage unit on the coast for the first time in 11 months and got some 20 boxes of rough rock out of there that I haven't seen in almost a year and a half!  So I have lots of new inspiration in my new studio space (although I'm still looking for artist-jeweler-beader/maker tenants here in Portland...if you know anyone).   Of course having 20 boxes of rough rock fall back into my lap(idary) from my own years of shopping in Tucson and around the west is a bit overwhelming in and of itself! 

 Some really amazing and rare material has come to the surface and I'm letting go of some of the last pieces of my most prized stuff.   This is the very, VERY, VERY last piece of super rare and beautiful Louisiana Opal I have left!  The mine has been closed for over a dozen years and it was only a tiny deposit that only lasted a few years of minor production.   It's natural opal that formed in between crystals of sand-silica that were then compressed together into a quartzite matrix.  So it's basically sand and opal compacted into one rare and beautiful package, rough of this material is only rarely available anywhere and commands a premium.  I don't have a scale to weigh this but it's the largest cut piece on eBay, and naturally, the ONLY one that's a bead!  That's my job!   This also has a green flash from a different angle... here it is...

I also found an AMAZING piece of Petrified Dinosaur bone in my storage unit and started cutting on it immediately!  One of those rocks that got me super excited!  This is actual fossilized dinosaur bone from the Utah Colorado border area.  What makes it SUPER SPECIAL is that many, many of the grayish interiors of the cells SPARKLE like they're chatoyant or something!  I have VERY rarely seen this amazing optical property in dino bone before!  It's a very hard optical effect to capture on the camera and I don't know what it is within the cryptocrystalline structure of the cells that causes it.  This material is not super silicated, it's more on the hardness of Picasso marble, but it's nice and strong and stable and cut's beautifully!  I found ONE fist sized chunk of this in storage and it's from a bone about 5 inches in diameter.  There was dark red & deep brown on the outside of the bone and the interior marro cell structures are the ones with the shimmery, silvery gray sparkles!  There will probably be less than 10 of these beads TOTAL out of this rough and I've already sold two and will keep one for myself!!! Measures 61x34mm by 15mm thick with a 3mm drill hole    and this wedge shaped piece is all from the interior marrow of the bone and it is super sparkly!    That's all I'll bother you with now, thanks for looking!

 

 Howdy Art Jewelry Folk!   Finally back from Tucson and getting settled into the old grind!  I got some neat new material in Tucson and Quartzite that I'll be showcasing as I cut it.  I also make a big committment to working with gemstone jet and creating a line of jet mourning jewelry and beads.  More on that later! 

 For now here's a sampling of a few things that have come out of my studio in the past week....

I got some NICE moonstone rough in Tucson, this is a 31x17mm shield bead I made out of grey moonstone rough from India....

I also got a good supply of native copper ore rough from the Keweenaw Penisula in Michigan's copper country.  A nice tan and soft green matrix mixed with btrilliant pure copper webbing....

and I got ONE chunk of this really intersting copper ore in Serpentine from a deposit on the N. California border...    and I continue to pour my "heart" into my work with the heart shapes, in memory of my late sweetheart, Richard Waugh, who died 7 years from an HIV related heart attack.  Richard loved heart shapes and we were just about to start work on a line of heart beads when he died a few weeks before Valentines Day, 2001.  Here's some hearts that I know Richard would have loved... Parrot Wing Jasper (silicated Chrysocolla & Malachite) from Mexico....

...and this is a leopard jasper heart with a 6mm micro donut hole that is connected to a 2mm drill hole that comes down from the cleft in the upper part of the heart....

that's it for now.  Thanks for looking at my new work and feel free to ask questions and check out my store for new work all the time!  

Still no cabs?????  lol

Love the rocks though - really beautiful. Going through this thread is a real treat. :)

I also love that its in one thread that you keep adding to. Its great to have it in one place. Wish more people would think to do that. :)

 Thanks Janice!  ANd I FINALLY did start cutting some cabs again, see below.  That's what happens when you run out of drill bits!   I think posting different pieces of the work I do in the same genre on the same thread is a good idea too.  If you don't like me or my stuff, you can just ignore me in fewer places!   Here's some of what I've been doing recently....

 I'm back and grinding and drilling my way through some wonderful and exotic new stones I got in Tucson last February!   Here's some "Bumble Bee Jasper" from Mexico, but it's not a jasper!  Some kind of sulfur stained marble. Only saw ONE dealer with any rough and it was dear, but what cool NATURAL colors and patterns!     and I got just a little bit of this mineral called copper aragonite from China.  It reminds me a lot of larimar but with a different kind of chatoyancy.  Not a really hard stone, but I've never seen anyone make beads out of it.... 

 

a malachite-chrysocolla-galena metal mineral that just rocks my world....

    and my very, very LAST piece of sugilite, which undercut some, so I left it with a textural matte finish which I find quite pleasing.... 

Yes, I AM doing some cabs again too, for those folks who like to bead bezel funky stones! 

Banded Swedish Iron ore....    and green serpentine with purple stichtite spots from Tasmania....   and this is an awesome cab of that malachite-galena mix....... the shiny grey part is shinier than the most silvery hematite!  Very cool and very rare.  That's it for now.  I think tomorrow I may start a thread just for dinosaur bone, petrified wood, and fossil focal beads since I'm getting into them in a whole new and seperate way!  

 

 Hi folks, Been working on some higher end focal beads out of unusual materials.  Here are some really fabulous things I've made recently.  This is a BIG, fat custom cut teardrop I made out of Smoky Rutilated Quartz from Brazil....
  and this is a new material that was hot in Tucson this year!  It's from a new deposit in Mexico of Chrysocolla (The sky blue) & Cuprite (the bright orange red) and it is being marketed as "Sonora Sunrise".  This is the ONLY piece I got of it, just one small chunk of rough enough to make this one big bead, but it turned out lovely!  Somehow it reminds me of a scarab....   and this is another copper silicate mineral, called Shattuckite, also from Mexico or Arizona.  Normally shattuckite has a lot of blue in it, while this one has a natural faced vein of splayed, drusy like, emerald green DIOPTASE!  Just one small chunk of rough and only a few pieces will have this emerald green dioptase on the face.  Very unusual and cool...the back side is just like a polished, green chrysocolla looking copper mineral (sold to me as shattuckite).       ....a really lovely dendritic pink Peruvian Opal, ...and last but not least, a really, REALLY BIG freeform grey moonstone (rough from India) with great adulaurescence and orientation.  The flash is like a silver mirror!  The healed inclusions on the back side create a  pleasing, linear pattern....  Time for me to head off to the studio for an evening of cutting.  I hear a bunch of jet calling my name....   Thanks for looking at my new goodies!  Have a great day.   (oh, and P.S.  I'm having a MAY DAY sale in my store with 20% off of most buy it nows and have a good number of 99 cent no reserve auctions up, fyi...)

 Howdy folks!  Here's some more beads that I've manifested recently!  Recently I've been archiving and organizing images of several years worth of my work and it sort of blows my mind just how many beads I've made and the variety of materials I've worked with!

 This is a super rare polyhedroid agate from Brazil.  The only flat sided agates ever found in the world and the mining area was flooded by a damn almost 40 years ago.  So all the material available is from collections of stuff that were accumulated in the few years this agate was produced back in the 60's.  Some of the agate shows layers of fluorescent chalcedony, as does this one.  It fluoresces under SHORT WAVE black light (the kind that burns your retinas out) NOT Long Wave Black Light (in discos and hippie dens).  Still a a very cool phenomena!    and this is what it looks like under SW black light... 

I continue to love working with fossils and the petrified dinosaur bone has done really well for me.  This rounded navette bead of dino bone has a rare, greenish color to it... and a petrified oolite, which is a kind of algae... and a lovely fan shaped bead made out of OPALIZED Palm ROOT, from Indonesia (not precious opal, no play of color or fire, but the root fibers do have a tigereye chatoyancy under the rightlight!) and lovely grained, silicated, petrified sycamore from Washington State, and finally, I keep playing in metal minerals, which are so cool, even if the bits of solid copper shred the diamonds off my drill bits!  It's worth it!  This is VERY high grade native copper ore from the Keewenaw peninsula in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, , the shine is veins of solid, thick, PURE copper mixed in with a greenish matrix.  This is probably the DENSEST copper ore I've ever cut! 

Thanks so much for letting me share my work in this forum.  I work alone in my studio, and don't do shows, just eBay, so I don't have a lot of venues to share my work with other people.   I appreciate this opportunity to share my unsual focal beads, and I'm happy to answer any rock id questions as well!
 

 Hey David!

Do you happen to have any New Hampshire granite sitting around? There is an East Coaster over in B&B forum wanting a specific bead made from New Hampshire granite.  Take a look at the post at http://cs.beadandbutton.com/bnbcs/forums/p/8575/39461.aspx#39461.

Those were some pretty interesting stones in that  last batch of pendants you posted. Keep showing us your work.

 

 Hi folks,   well Russ, I don't have any New Hampshire granite around.  I'll get back to the guy you mentioned in the other post, but when I hear things like "heptagonal prism" shape I want to say "NO THANKS" and run away fast!   That's the reason I don't generally do custom work.   As you pointed out in your response, making something here is really different than getting those little faceted "scepter" shapes that are cranked out of China or Brazil.  In the time it would take me to make a symmetrical prism shape, I could probably cut 5 or 6 other "freeform" shapes and have a much more pleasant experience doing it!  Same reason I don't facet.  People don't appreciate how hard it is to make something flat and scratch free and shiny.   Much easier to get a clean dome than a perfect, symmetrical flat, especially when one is using round wheels!  

I DO like to play with granites and "common" stones though.  Here's a piece of genuine London Bridge Granite that I made into a bead.  It's from scraps that were left over when they moved the bridge from London to Lake Havasu and I got several chunks of it back in the mid 70's from some snowbirds in our rock club who had been out there during the reconstruction of the bridge.  I also like granite just for it's colors and patterns, but THIS granite, from London Bridge, is naturally extra special!     on the higher end of rarity for stones I just finished this lovely freeform out of genuine lavendar jadeite jade, rough material from a mine in Turkey that ships it's entire yearly production directly to China, so it was a real stroke of luck to get my hands on this little bit of rough!  (most of the gems one sees labeled as Lavendar or Purple Jade are, shall we say, FAKE!)  I like the little brick red beauty spot on this piece....  and at the other end, where I'm recycling industrial waste, here is a lovely, super shiny freeform bead I made from copper saturated kiln brick from an old copper smelter that was in Michigan's Upper Peninsual in Copper country.   No idea how old it is, but the copper industry there has been gone for a long time.  I got a few slabs of this funky industrial waste at a gem show decades ago, and have only seen the rough for sale once since then.  The white spots are the ceramic kiln brick and the rest is smelted copper ore...   That's all for now!   I'll be cutting more pet woods, dino bone, tree fern and other funky stuff over the next couple days.  Here's one of the pieces I just sold, made out of EXTREMELY rare petrified tree fern from Brazil.  This material is from an old Brazilian collection and the site has been a national park, closed to collecting, for ages.  This stuff is many tens of millions of years older than most of the pet woods found in the US...  LOVE the patterns and colors!

 
I've been doing well on eBay with clients in Britain, and they really seem to like my beads made of fossilized and petrified stuff.  The weak dollar and strong pound, along with the fact that nobody really does this kind or work in Britain really helps me out.   Have a great day and thanks for checking out my work!

Really cool pendants!  The opal pendant....what is the black backing and how is it attached to the opal?

oh well thanks for atleast looking at the request.  if your intrested in the new england granite im headed that way hopefully in september and would be more than happy to pull you a few peices

To Otter:  re: granite.  Thanks for the offer, I appreciate it,  but I've got PLENTY to cut as it is!  So no need to pick me up any New England granite.   

 Hi all!  Long time no post.  I've been busy transferring from my old eBay management system, called Channel Advisor (CA), to a new system, called Auctiva.  I have used CA for 7+ years and while I have hard copies of all my old images, the web versions of everything I've posted on this forum have been hosted by CA.  Since CA is no longer supporting my system or allowing access, I assume that at SOME time soon they'll stop hosting all my old images and when they clear their files, my pics in this and my other threads will disappear.  Soooooo....I'll post a little bit more here but I'll probably start some new threads soon with my new images of my work hosted elsewhere.  Probably a good time anyway as these threads are a little image heavy now, as well as the fact that I'd like to have different threads to address and share my work in different mediums.   Thanks for all the viewing and sharing everyone's done on these threads of mine since I joined this forum. 

So here's a sampling of some of the things I've been working on in gemstone and natural stone materials...

This is a petrified dinosaur bone heart.  Part left "natural" surfaces and part buffed and polished.  This is not really petrified in the silicated sense.  It's a softer, more sedimentary fossilization of the dino bone.  This came from a big chunk of joint bone that was rather calcified and I still have a piece that has solid calcite growing in the center of the bone.   Not sure where this rough came from, but probably the Colorado Plateau....   easy to see the cell structure of the marrow and the dark bit is the natural outside layer of the bone.

a nice inverted teardrop of a spiderwebby Variscite from Australia...   this long slender "dog tag" bead is made out of hard, silicated petrified wood.  Not sure of the locale of the rough, but somewhere in the U.S. West or NW regions.   great patterns & colors in the wood.  matte finish...    a nice rounded, big bead of pink river rock granite with a nice stripe in it....    and finally a really unusual orbicular rhyolite from Mexico.  This rhyolite was a new find at Tucson in 2007 and there was still only the one vendor with rough from the mine when I was there this year.  Great eyes!    that's all for now.  I have some other cold worked glass pieces that I'd like to share, but that's for another thread!  Have a great day!

 

 Hi Folks,  I haven't posted to this thread in awhile as I thought that since the old image hosting service I was using "went down" in July, I expected all the pics on this thread to disappear!  Evidently they're still holding them out there in cyberspace so I thought I would update this with some of the new gemstone focal beads I've been working on.   I finally got my studio moved and all the equipment hooked up again.  Very happy with my new space, a detached garage with windows, insulation, a bathroom, hot water, attic storage, and more!  Also 20% cheaper rent than the smaller, slanty floored, concrete cave space they were going to let me move in to in the old industrial arts warehouse where my old studio was!  So while I'm worn out from a week of moving rocks, lapidary equipment, office stuff, and then RESETTING it all up, I'm happy that it's over with and I can finally get started working on production for the Portland Bead Society Show the 1st & 2nd of November!

 ANyhow, here is a very cool patterned Indian Paint Stone bead I recently made,   and I really like the matte finish on this baby snowflake obsidian wedge bead...      and a nice soft heart made out of variegated serpentine...    and keeping my heart in a colorful mode, here is a Peruvian Pink Opal heart, very nice big, nearly flawless piece....   That's it for now.  Time to get back to the old grind.  Hopefully will be a new grind this week when I take possession of a lightly used Diamond Pacific Genie grinder-sander-polishng unit that I found at an estate sale!  My old one is near death and 1/3 of the baseboard (particle board!) crumbled when I moved it from my studio!   Thanks for looking. 
 

 

 HI Folks!  It's been a rough and tumble couple of months for this stonecutter but I'm finally getting back to the old grind.  I'm really trying to put my heart into it, so here's a couple of stone hearts that I've done recently.....

 I hand cut this snowflake obsidian heart.  One side and the edges are perfect and polished.  The other face is partially high polished polished with the upper area left with the natural surface of the stone, with shiny breaks and conchoidal breaks on the surface.  It's part of my "broken heart" series, which is about how broken hearts are as strong and beautiful, if not more so, than an unblemished heart.  This one of a kind focal bead has a nice big 3mm drill hole.      and then there's this really nice, BIG, petrified DINOSAUR BONE heart!  Great brick red colors and cell structure.  A completely healed, strong & stable, natural fracture barely visible on one side, makes this beauty a part of my "broken heart" series! 

and I really love the brilliant golden needles PACKED in this rutilated quartz, wonky shaped heart.  I like the way that the clusters of rutile and the cloudyness of the quartz mostly hide the wide drill hole....

That's all for now for this thread.  I also recently cut the NICEST, black drusy psilomelane bead that I've ever cut, with a band of white agate running through it, but I'll post that on my drusy thread where it belongs...   Thanks for looking and have a nice day.  Regards, David

Hi All!   Having an exciting time in sunny Tucson and found some great deals on rough!  Unfortunately TWO out of the three laptops my group was going to have down here are DEAD so I don't get the chance to write or check on my internet world much!  Hopefuly will fix that soon!  Here's a few fab pieces I finished before I left Portland....

Banded Psilomelane from the Crown of Silver Mine in Mexico, old stock, HARD to cut, HARD to drill, and HARD to polish!  I've only see a few dealers here in Tucson with a few trays of EXPENSIVE cabochons of this material.  Both the rarity of the rough along with the challenge of cutting it keep most lapidary artists away from working on it.  I still have NEVER seen anyone make beads out of it!    one of my favorite things about this piece is how different the patterning and banding are on the different sides.  The shiny black and gun metal silver grey go so well together.  

I also got busy on some fab moonstones before I left.  This one is a minty green and 99% flawless, crystal clear with great adulauarescence.....and I cut this nice pair of silvery grey moonstone teardrops.  For those of you who know my work, you know how RARE it is for me to cut a matched pair of anything!   I really SCORED on some great feldspar rough from Tanzania here in Tucson, So when I get back home and get in the studio cutting again there will be some great sunstones, burgundy red cats eye feldspars, and massive mint green moonstones!  I also got some great aqua colored massive kyanite and some really unique big blue iolites with little coppery sunstones shimmers in them!  

 That's all for now, will try and report more later!

I like the idea of the extra thick backing for the doublets.  What do you use for the back... basalt, obsidian, ???  Regardless, they are very nice stones and a great idea.

 Mike

 Howdy folks,

Culver:

I like the idea of the extra thick backing for the doublets.  What do you use for the back... basalt, obsidian, ???  Regardless, they are very nice stones and a great idea.

 Mike

 

 Hey Mike, I generally use gemstone jet or lapis for the backing on my laminate beads, but that's just personal choice and mostly when I'm working with quartzes or opals.  I like to use Mother of Pearl for other translucent stones.   One could certainly use anything one wanted to including basalt or obsidian.  It depends on the look you want.  When I was at the AGTA show I saw some work of the cutters who back in the 90's inspired me to do laminate doublets and I got re-inspired with some wicked new ideas. 

So, made it home from Tucson and the annual hajj to Gemstone Mecca!  Finally settling back into the studio and breaking in some INCREDIBLE new diamond wheels,  playing with new treasures, and breaking out some old treasures that were too hard for me to cut with my old worn wheels.  It's such a wonderful feeling to have a really, really hard jasper or agate just melt underneath your fingers as you bring the shape out of the stone.  Good diamonds are a lapidary artists best friend....

 

 

My new grindings from February 19th.   First rough grind on my new, rock devouring, 60 grit, 8"x2" diamond grinding wheel, Sachi.   I named her after the company from India she came from.  That's Sachi on the left.  She's a realllllly good girl and was a SWEET deal!   She chewed up all those stones in no time and those were some hard puppies, I picked them out special to break her in and test her out.   Front row, L to R, Gem Chrysocolla (not turquoise), Indonesian Purple Seam Agate, two Willow Creeks (yes, both the maroon and the ivory one came from the same mine in Idaho), Indonesian Lace Agate, Aussie Tigerye, Texas Petrified Palm Wood, Sudbury Shiny Cobalt Ore (some silver & arsenic mixed in, for sure), and the oval at the end is an Brazilian Oco Agate geode filled with sparkling drusy quartz crystals.  All will be bead focal pendants.  The second row is more stuff!  This is just the first stage, rough cut.  They need at least another grinding at 120 grit, then sandings at 120, 220, 600, 1200, 3000 grits and THEN a polish....  cutting rocks is hard.

More later.

 

 

 Hey Beaders!   Here's some lovely pieces I made out of new material I got when I was in Tucson last month.   I got one chunk of this material called Sonora Sunrise from Sonora, Mexico.  It's a beautful sky blue chrysocolla with firey red cuprite and I believe that the black is tenorite.  They are all secondary minerals after copper.   I only got three beads out of the one fist sized chunk of rough I got and these are the two big dramatic ones...     I picked up a pound of massive kyanite crystals from Tanzania and cut these two pieces.   The dealer is a German fellow who is from near Idar Oberstein and deals only in Tanzanian gemstones.   I really love the cats eye effect and schiller that make these appear like a blue gray lightning captured in stone... 

and I got this super adulaurescent sunstone from Tanzania from the same dealer.   If one looks at the edge of this sunstone bead there is a moonstone effect on the side, sort of like a sunstone-moonstone hybrid!

.   That's it for now.  I'm cutting quite a few new things so more to come! 

Wow, great pendants!  I love that Sonora Sunrise--so much vivid color all in one stone!  Alice

Peachtree:

Wow, great pendants!  I love that Sonora Sunrise--so much vivid color all in one stone!  Alice

 

Thanks Alice!  I sold one of those two beads already.  I DID find one of the suppliers of this rough that I saw in Tucson who is selling rough on line.  So I may get another chunk of it.  Just really incredible colors. Nothing quite like it.  

Moving on.... Well Easter is almost upon us so I thought I would share a pic of a fantabulous rutilated quartz bead with a cross in it and TWO other crosses mirrored in the back of the prism. I have more pics of this in the listing in my store.  It was quite the Tucson adventure and find as I describe below...

 

 A really, truly, remarkably beautiful centerpiece bead made out of Rutilated Quartz and expertly cut in Brazil.  This one of a kind gem weighs 87 carats and has a flat mirror polished face with two mirror polished faces on the back side, angled facets at either end, and a finely finished girdle.   Measures 52x18x12mm with a 2.5mm drill hole for easy stringing on a silver or gold chain or a fine cable (I have snake chains in my eBay store that will fit this).  The mirror reflections of the face are so perfect that in one of the pics you can clearly see a disembodied piece of my finger reflected in the stone! This magnificent prism of included quartz is beautiful enough with the myraid reflections that bounce around its magical inner space, but the real splendor comes from two distinct rutile inclusions.   Rutile is a mineral composed primarily of titanium dioxide.  

What makes this piece even MORE FABULOUS is that the two distinct rutile cystals CROSS each other and form the figure of the Cross!  It is very clear and very evocative of a beautiful and organic Cross.  To add to the magic, the mirror polish on the back facets REFLECT the inclusions in the stone, so from the proper angle, one can look in and see the actual CROSS, that is IN the stone and then there are TWO MORE CROSSES reflected in the background!  This beautiful gem is deeply imbued with intense Christian metaphor and I think it would make a great talisman for aperson who would appreciate both it's beauty and the opportunity to meditate on the Christian mysteries and the meaning of Jesus death on the Cross.  

When I was in Tucson this year I spent an afternoon checking out the offerings at the American Gem Trade Association show at the convention center.  This is THE high end gem show in Tucson!  My associate and I found a wonderful dealer from New York City who had some of the most fabulous and creative gem quality focal beads that he had custom designed and had cut in Brazil.  We were especially taken with  his limited stock of just a few dozen quartz centerpiece beads that had been just perfectly mirror faceted on the face and sides, except with one side on the back left with a hammered finish.  They were very striking and he had a small selection that were completely mirror faceted faces, without the hammered finish face accent.  Of those few, there were TWO that had rutile inclusions in them and of those two THIS ONE is by FAR the better one!  So I picked this one up for resale on eBay and thought it would be most appreciated in this time before Easter.  It really is so fabulous that if it doesn't sell I'd be more than happy to keep it in my own private collection and wear it regularly!

The colors of Spring and the traditional pastels of Easter inspired me to do this bead.  Lavender Jadeite Jade from Turkey. The REAL stuff. EVERY piece of "purple" or "lavender" jade I've seen on eBay looks like a fake to me, but this is the real McCoy! Only enough of this rough left to make ONE other bead and then there's NO MORE! Only saw this rough for sale once, ever, and that was 10 years ago.   I saw only two dealers in Tucson that had real lavender jadeite jade and they just had traditional strands and stuff and were they pricey!

 

  I hand cut this piece which measures 52x28mm and is 13mm thick with a 3mm drill hole.  It has a mirror polished finish. Nice low domed faces on each side and rounded edges on this elegant oval-egg shape.  It looks like amazing white waves in sea of purple and lavendar waves.

It's a  RARE, NEW material that I got ONE chunk of in Tucson in 2007!  I didn't see any more of the material this year.  Same guy who had great quality agatized coral rough also had a small pile of this beautiful purple seam agate.   The rough showed great layering of purple, lavendars, whites, translucents, and wisps, with a bit of earthy crusty colored agate on the edge.  I haven't seen any agate that really compares with this!

That's it for now.  Thanks for giving me the opportunity to share.  I've also got 99 cent auctions in my eBay store with no reserve, so folks can get some nice custom cut beads in spite of the economic downturn!