Maury Mountain Moss Agate

Buying on the Internet can be a hazardous business. It’s hard enough to tell if an interesting image lurks in a mineral in the hand, and judging on screen is doubly difficult. The arrival of a new package is usually heralded by a demand for VAT from HM Customs and Excise, but sometimes they slip through – the process seems almost random although I’m sure it shouldn’t be!
I buy a lot of material from a site called Great Slabs, most of it known as ‘rough’, ie unpolished. They wet the specimens with water to take photographs to show online but for scanning I use Johnson’s Baby Oil. It brings out the colour and detail, but is hard to apply in a perfectly even coat – when the scans pop up on screen I often discover areas of different thickness, which subtly changes the colours and means it’s back to the oil and a re-scan. Microscopic bubbles are also a pest – a few can be removed digitally, but they often necessitate a second (or third…) scan.
The latest batch from Great Slabs contained several pieces of Maury Mountain Moss Agate. I was attracted to this material – which comes from a mountain in Oregon – by its lovely name, and also because ‘moss’ generally indicates fine textures. Just how interesting any one specimen will prove is complete pot luck – it’s a ‘God is in the details’ material, its intricacies all but invisible to the eye, and generally best for fabrics rather than images. This image (double click on it to see full screen) is an enlargement of an area just under 4cm square and it might be worth trying on the website: the colours are wonderfully subtle and varied – I find the lavender especially beautiful and haven’t encountered it in this agate before. To me, it evokes the colours and textures of a coral reef.