Lapidarium: The Secret Lives of Stones

Product Information

In Lapidarium, renowned art critic Hettie Judah explores the unexpected stories behind sixty stones that have shaped and inspired human history, from Dorset fossil-hunters to Chinese philosophers, Catherine the Great to Michelangelo.

As a broadcaster she can been heard (and sometimes seen) on programmes including BBC Radio 4’s Front Row and Art That Made Us. We hear of incredible discoveries, greed, curses and forgeries alongside the geography and geology of their origins. And though I read this book straight through from start to finish, this is absolutely the sort of bibliomantic tome that one might flip through at random, choosing a chapter based on mood or whim: learn a weird rock fact, let it lodge in your brain like a wayward pebble in your shoe, and allow it to guide your energies for the day.The moment I stopped reading, it literally left my head and I couldn't tell you a single thing that had been mentioned so far. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. In jewelry my preference has always been for the semiprecious stones that had some character and color to them. Hettie Judah breaks her book down by types of stones into these categories;Stones and Powers, Sacred Stones, Stones and Stories, Stone Technology, Shapes in Stones and Living Stones.

Then electricity is brought up again (without the connection back to elektron) and we are taken through a jarring summary of the discovery of amber's properties with a profusion of unexplained quotes. Hettie Judah is chief art critic on the British daily paper The i, a regular contributor to The Guardian’s arts pages, and a columnist for Apollo magazine. Well, not really, but that is the tone this book takes, and despite the interesting collection of rocks and minerals detailed in this book, the focus is heavily and irredeemably skewed towards art and history. It was easy to read, and had plenty of interesting stories pertaining to the rocks that the author chose, but the chapters were very short (one was only two pages) and provided only a brief overview of the rocks in question. Through the realms of art, myth, geology, philosophy and power, the story of humanity can be told through the minerals and materials that have allowed us to evolve and create.We are told of incredible creations and decorations, large and small, carved from these prized stones. Includes the stories of various chemists, archaeologists, jewelers, prospectors, collectors, among others. Also points out that the provenances of most of the most famous jewels are fabricated (especially the ones claiming to go back centuries).