Carnelians
Published On: 11-14-2011 06:54pm
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Yesterday I was in Maryland at a sailboat marina close to Annapolis, enjoying what seemed suspiciously like an early fall afternoon. Mid-seventies, cool breeze, clear skies. Oh no! Summer is always all-too-short for me, and its demise catches me unaware every year.
The great thing about the changing seasons, tho', is the change in color palette it brings to my workbench. Now I'll start working again with the rich, darker tones of autumn we women all love, as I create new pieces for the holiday shows.
Carnelian is one of my favorites for this time of year - fact, one of my favorites, period. I had some pieces out for my August shows last weekend, and they caught the eye of many shoppers.
Carnelians are a type of chalcedony, one of the many varieties of stones in the quartz family, and they are typically transluctent stones in a rande of hues from orange to reddish-orange and even a dark-brownish orange. Fairly hard, they have been used throughout the civilized world as jewelry and as ebellishments for other artifacts. The Greeks and Romans valued them and thought that wearing carnelians calmed bad temper or stilled the blood. (Wouldn't it be wonderful if that worked?!?)
Check out my website for some examples of contemporary carnelian pieces.
The image attached comes from Wikipedia's site. A carnelian intaglio, it is from the early first century B.C., and is licensed by the copyright holder to be shared under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic License.
The great thing about the changing seasons, tho', is the change in color palette it brings to my workbench. Now I'll start working again with the rich, darker tones of autumn we women all love, as I create new pieces for the holiday shows.
Carnelian is one of my favorites for this time of year - fact, one of my favorites, period. I had some pieces out for my August shows last weekend, and they caught the eye of many shoppers.
Carnelians are a type of chalcedony, one of the many varieties of stones in the quartz family, and they are typically transluctent stones in a rande of hues from orange to reddish-orange and even a dark-brownish orange. Fairly hard, they have been used throughout the civilized world as jewelry and as ebellishments for other artifacts. The Greeks and Romans valued them and thought that wearing carnelians calmed bad temper or stilled the blood. (Wouldn't it be wonderful if that worked?!?)
Check out my website for some examples of contemporary carnelian pieces.
The image attached comes from Wikipedia's site. A carnelian intaglio, it is from the early first century B.C., and is licensed by the copyright holder to be shared under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic License.
