Great South Gems & Minerals

• Cross & Heart Carving•
(Afghanistan) 

Cross Carving Lapis Lazuli (Afghanistan)   Heart Carving Lapis Lazuli (Afghanistan)

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• Lapis Lazuli•
(Afghanistan) 

Lapis Lazuli - Lapis jewelry

Lapis Lazuli has been a semi-precious stone prized since antiquity for its intense blue color. Often called simply "Lapis", this beautiful stone is a rock, not a mineral: whereas a mineral has only one constituent, lapis lazuli is formed from more than one mineral. The main component of lapis lazuli is lazxurite (25% to 40%), a fieldspathoid silicate mineral composed of sodium, aluminum, silicon, oxygen, sulfur, and chloride. Most lapis lazuli also contains calcite, which make up the small white areas of the stone, and sodalite, which is the blue, and pyrite, the yellowish metallic spots.

N448 Cross Carving Lapis Lazuli (Afghanistan) Price: $4.95   N449 Heart Carving Lapis Lazuli (Afghanistan) Price: $4.95

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Lapis Lazuli has been mined in the Badakhshan province of Afghanistan for at least 6,500 years.

In ancient Egypt lapis lazuli was a favorite stone for amulets and ornaments such as scarabs; it was also used by the Assyrians and Babylonians for seals. Lapis jewelry has been found at excavations of the Predynastic Egyptian site Naquads (3300-3100 BC) and powdered lapis was used as eyeshadow by Cleopatra.

Lapis takes an excellent polish and can be made into jewelry, carvings, boxes, mosaics, ornaments and vases. In architecture it has been used for cladding the walls and columns of palaces and churches

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