Lapidarium: The Secret Lives of Stones

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Amongst these essays exploring how human culture has formed stone and, conversely, the roles stone has played in forming human culture, one will read of the Meat-Shaped Stone of Taiwan, a piece of banded jasper that resembles a tender piece of mouth-watering braised pork belly, There is the soap opera melodrama of Pele’s Hair, golden strands of volcanic glass, spun into hair-fine threads by volcanic gasses and blown across the landscape. And not to mention the hysterical metaphysical WTFery of angel-appointed wife swaps in the chapter of alchemist and astrologer John Dee’s smoky quartz cairngorm, as well as, the mystical modern-day TikTik moldavite craze vibing amongst those of the witchy-psychic persuasion. I cannot even tell you how many times I paused in my reading to open a new Google tab and research, thinking, “holy fake crystal skulls/malachite caskets/pyroclastic flow rap lyrics! I gotta learn more about this!” An absolute feast for the senses, the book itself feels very much like a collector’s treasure hoarded wunderkammer of mythic and mysterious curiosities. It is split into six sections (Stones and Power, Sacred Stones, Stones and Stories, Stone Technology, Shapes in Stone, and Living Stones), and each section reveals a chapter devoted to unearthing an individual stone with imaginative, artful descriptions and a pretty wild, or wildly fascinating story connected to each stone. A storybook, and a delightful one [...] The essays are shaped with great skill and Judah finds curious and pleasing symmetry and coincidences in the varied stories she tells [...] a portrait of our whole world created from the contents of the ground"

Review: Lapidarium: The secret lives of stones by Hettie Judah

In 1453 Constantinople fell to the Ottoman army. The great Muslim empire led by Sultan Mehmet II supplanted Christian Byzantium and gained control of trade routes through the Eastern Mediterranean. Italian merchants traded with the Ottomans for alum and dyestuffs, but it rankled that their textile industry was held ransom to a hostile and capricious power. Inspired by the lapidaries of the ancient world, this book is a beautifully designed collection of true stories about sixty different stones that have influenced our shared history A gem of a collection [...] a highly accessible guide delivered in a light, informative tone. Quietly authoritative, the author sustains our attention through the pithiness of her essays and the verve of her storytelling" The struggle for territorial power is often the struggle for mineral wealth: ore, fuel, construction material and other precious substances extracted from the Earth, enriching monarchs (and corporations) hundreds of miles distant. The science of geology does not play a neutral role: there is power bound up in the acts of analyzing, categorizing, and naming things. In the nineteenth century, geological surveys made the race to extract resources more efficient, and provided fuel and materials for expanding empires: the East India Company's 1851 Geological Survey of India identified coal and iron ore to supply the railways. Judah is an amazing writer. She weaves stone through human history showing us how we gave different types of stone the power of royalty and worship. She breaks down the history of each individual stone and how it’s impacted the human race through history. We interweave them in our mythology. They become a medium for our artwork generation after generation. Our advancement as a species came about by forging stone tools even now the Industrial Revolution was possible because of coal.

Elektron is a Greek name for amber (it migrated into Latin as electron). In the third century b.c.e., the natural philosopher Theophrastus observed amber's static electricity, a "power of attraction" which he likens to a magnet. He also describes the curious substance lyngourion, which shared amber's powers-indeed it was simply the stone by another name-"some say that it not only attracts straws and bits of wood, but also copper and iron, if the pieces are thin." Lyngourion was supposedly formed from lynx urine: "better when it comes from wild animals rather than tame ones and from males rather than females." Theophrastus's On Stones remained a source for lapidaries until the Renaissance, and the formation of lyngourion a popular fixture for illustration. Here's the thing: I wanted to be able to come away from each chapter able to say a couple of sentences about each stone, but this book will leave you with a half–remembered sentence on someone who owned the stone in a century you probably won't remember. It's just a wholly unbalanced book. I wanted to love it – I think there should be loads of books encouraging us to reconnect with the natural world, to come away with some general knowledge about our planet and our surroundings and how it's shaped human civilisation at large. These tales do none of this. They're much too niche, poorly pulled together and not particularly interesting. As much as I liked the Rani of Kapurthala's crescent-shaped emerald, I really can't say I know anything about emeralds in general after reading this book. And that was one of my favourite chapters. For too long, artists have been told that they can't have both motherhood and a successful career. In this polemical volume, critic and campaigner Hettie Judah argues that a paradigm shift is needed within the art world to take account of the needs of artist mothers (and other parents: artist fathers, parents who don't identify with the term 'mother', and parents in other sectors of the art world). Het boek doet wat denken aan het boek van Kassia St Clair over kleuren , maar dan met bevlogen verhalen over gesteenten die toch wat deden nadenken Bv over de invloed van de prijs van de aflaten of over de PlayStation war , die de verhalen niet altijd even licht maken .

Lapidarium: The Secret Lives of Stones — Hettie Judah Lapidarium: The Secret Lives of Stones — Hettie Judah

Stone by stone, story by fascinating story, Lapidarium builds into a dazzling, epoch-spanning adventure through human culture, and beyond. Ugaz’s case is all too familiar in Peru, where powerful groups regularly use the courts to silence journalists by fabricating criminal allegations against them.’

Hayward Touring have announced details including the full schedule for Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood which tours to the Arnolfini, Bristol; MAC, Birmingham; Millennium Gallery, Sheffield and DCA, Dundee during 2024 and 2025 Fascinating for Latin learners and for Tolkien fans of all ages, The Hobbit has been translated into Latin for the first time since its publication 75 years ago. Inspired by the lapidaries of the ancient world, Lapidarium is a collection of essays about sixty different stones that have influenced our shared history.