Extraordinary & Colossal Banded Onyx Centre Piece, One Metre Long

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Extraordinary & Colossal Banded Onyx Centre Piece, One Metre Long:
$2959.44

A highly impressive and monumentally proportioned [one metre long] elongate banded calcite travertine marble bowl, hewn and carved from solid semi precious onyx, originating from the Central American continent. The Onyx has a vitreous silky lustre, transparent-to-white colour full of interesting inflexions and seams of mineral content. Mexican Onyx is the fracture fill of morphological prominent fissure-ridge travertine, now polished to a highly smooth finish.

Dimensions:

Height: 5 inches, 130mm

Length: 39.5 inches, 1000mm

Width: 9 inches, 230mm

Approximate weight: 15 Kg

Type: CaC03 Layered travertine.

Category: Chalcedony variety

Origin: Mexico.

Mexican Onyx Age: Undetermined, between 52,000 to 5,000 years ago.

Mohs scale of hardness: 6.5 to 7.

Crystal system: Trigonal

Valued:

The ancient Romans entered battle carrying amulets of sardonyx engraved with Mars, the god of war. This was believed to bestow courage in battle. In Renaissance Europe, wearing sardonyx was believed to bestow eloquence. A traditional Persian belief is that it helped with epilepsy. Sardonyx was traditionally used by English midwives to ease childbirth by laying it between the breasts of the mother.

Uses:

Onyx has a long history of use for hard-stone carving and jewellery, where it is usually cut as a cabochon or into beads. It has also been used for intaglio and hard-stone cameo engraved gems, where the bands make the image contrast with the ground. Some onyx is natural but much of the material in commerce is produced by the staining of agate.

Onyx was used in Egypt as early as the Second Dynasty to make bowls and other pottery items. Use of sardonyx appears in the art of Minoan Crete, notably from the archaeological recoveries at Knossos.

Brazilian green onyx was often used as plinths for art deco sculptures created in the 1920s and 1930s. The German sculptor Ferdinand Preiss used Brazilian green onyx for the base on the majority of his chryselephantine sculptures. Green onyx was also used for trays and pin dishes – produced mainly in Austria – often with small bronze animals or figures attached.

Onyx is mentioned in the Bible many times. Sardonyx (onyx in which white layers alternate with Sard - a brownish colour) is mentioned in the Bible as well.

Onyx was known to the Ancient Greeks and Romans. The first-century naturalist Pliny the Elder described both type of onyx and various artificial treatment techniques in his Naturalis Historia.