Jewelry Lovers

Lazulite, as the exquisite royal blue lapis is also called, differs from all other ornamental stones in that it is not a mineral but a rock which—evolving through pneumatolytic alteration from a contact-metamorphosed limestone—is made up of several minerals in varying amounts. As unique as this chemical composition is its unequalled night-dark blue, which Pliny extolled as “a fragment of the starry firmament,” and which, long before his time, the ancient Egyptians had already used as inlay in their splendid goldsmiths’ work. The name lapis lazuli is based on the Latin lapis = stone, and the Arabic azul or al-lazward, which as well as denoting the sky also includes all nuances of blue. Ancient writings show that this “stone of the sky” has been the preeminent jewel in the land of the Nile for at least 5,000 years for ornamenting bracelets, pendants, daggers and breastplates, and for carving into seal rings, figures, and scarabs. It may be presumed that the Egyptian craftsmen used lapis obtained from Afghanistan, for even today the most valuable material is found in the Firgamu mines in the Badakshan district of the Hindu Kush mountains, where the rock is blasted out of the hillside after being heated and then quenched with cold Water. The quality is of an intense ultramarine-blue, evenly colored throughout and flecked with tiny pyrite crystals glittering like metallic gold.

In contrast with this are the less uniformly blue, paler, and—depending on their condition—less costly specimens from the Chilean Andes, which are usually interspersed with calcite intercalations and flecked with white. The incorporated ultramarine molecules of the minerals sodalite, lazurite, and hauynite lend the lapis the warm, particularly attractive blue, whose saturated shade with its imperceptible hint of red made the pulverized lazurite a highly esteemed artist’s pigment in the Middle Ages. It also explains its constant popularity since time immemorial for wonderful, carved and inlaid works and for such magnificent objects as the famous lapis lazuli terrestrial globe, made from a single block, on the tomb of Saint Ignatius in Rome, or those regal wall facings which can still be admired in one of the rooms of the small palace town of Tsarskoye-Selo, now known as Pushkin. Whether it is because of its tranquil, well-balanced satin color that it is chosen for elegant necklaces, or because of its mottled and shaded aspect that it is worked into caskets or carved into statuettes, the invigorating blue of lapis is always beguiling to the heart and eye of the beholder.

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