Alchemy

Two years ago I sponsored a project at Newport University's fashion department entitled 'Frocks from Rocks', with the hope of seeing how the mineral images could be used to create striking dresses. The latest student to explore the possibilities, Sophie Shardelow, graduated in June this year with a collection based on the theme of 'alchemy'. Inspired by the alchemists' dream of the transmutation of base metals into gold she created a series of 'looks' that began with a combination of knitwear and suede calculated to evoke the feeling of lead and culminated with a golden silk evening dress. To represent the process of transmutation she chose an image from Tiger's Eye to make the garments picture above - a stretch body suits made of printed lycra, a silk backless all-in-one, and a Grecian-style draped dress. Sophie is now working with me developing more ideas, so watch this space for developments!

Calling all geoscientists!

One of our most beautiful Paesina Stone images has made it onto the front cover Geoscientist, the magazine of the UK’s Geological Society, with a selection of other images featured inside and introduced as follows: ‘Most geologists will remember the first timethey gazed down a microscope at a thin section and marvelled at nature’s hidden display of colour and texture. However, three years of undergraduate petrology, with its classification schemes and examinations, is bound to install a certain level of professional detachment towards the more aesthetic aspects of rocks and minerals.

The fact that rocks are studied for practical reasons, not just because they are nice to look at close-up, means that most people outside the profession have absolutely no idea of their hidden beauty. It sometimes takes someone from outside one’s own discipline to point out the obvious - seen close-up rocks and minerals, even those common ones like quartz and tourmaline that working geologist often take for granted, can be shockingly beautiful.’ Indeed they are, and I’m looking forward to seeing what delights await in two more batches from The Netherlands and another from my favourite US site, ‘Great Slabs’.

A world in a grain of sand

It was great to see a presentation of agate images from the website on http://geology.com/ this week and while browsing the home page I noticed a book I hadn’t come across before. Entitled A Grain of Sand it features extraordinary images by the author, Dr Gary Greenberg, taken with a 3D light microscope he developed and patented – you can find out more at his website http://www.sandgrains.com/.
It has been estimated that there are 48,000 billion billion grains of sand on earth and, true to the maxim that Nature never repeats herself, no two are exactly alike. But just how unalike is the real revelation of the book. Sand grains vary according to the rock they are derived from and the extent and nature of erosion they have undergone – the archetypal round grain of quartz is typically the product of several cycles of erosion over a billion years. Biological materials such as shells, diatoms and foraminifera also form a significant element in many sands, adding greatly to the microscopic variety of form and colour.
The centrepiece of the picture above looks like just the sort of thing I would like to scan. It’s made of chabazite, a glassy member of the zeolite family which, like many of the most beautiful minerals, are silica-based. The only snag is that this specimen is a mere 1/4mm across – not much larger than some of the specks of polishing powder I remove digitally as impurities! With Dr Greenberg’s book as stimulation, it is easy to join William Blake in imagining ‘a world in a grain of sand’.