This is an annual event which brings in dealers and customers from all over the world. If you have even a passing interest in rocks, this event will make your jaw drop at the sheer variety of stuff available.
If you are into making your own jewellery, you could get anything you want, from strings of beads, to individual pendants pieces, or just chunks of raw rock – in 40-gallon drums, sold by the kilo.
I am more into natural art, so I was looking for fossils or rock which is beautiful on its own. I left with some magnificent pieces:
- A jewellery box, carved from black fossil-laden marble. The carver usually works the fossils into the piece – for example, a straight cone shell becomes the handle of box lid.
- A 36-inch string of turquoise beads for several dollars per foot
- A 2-inch fossil shark tooth
- A tiny trilobite carefully exposed emerging from its base rock, with antennae and eye pods intact
- A fossilized ammonite shell, bisected symmetrically to provide matched opposite spirals
- Two adjacent slices of petrified wood from Madagascar, one for me and its sibling to give to my sister Elfrida
- A blue agate sliced in half and polished, to mount on a shelf.
- A dendrite from Utah that you would swear was a Chinese painting of landscapes with trees, but is actually a fractal caused by seepage of manganese oxide into tiny cracks in the base rock
When I got home, I regretted that I had passed up an opportunity to acquire a Moroccan trilobite fossil the size of a dinner plate. So I went back on Sunday (the last day of the event) to get one. Of course, I also saw other great things and came away with more stuff:
- Sliced blue agates that I put some felt feet on to make some beautiful coasters
- Some more dendrites
- Some nice onyx figurines
- A vegetable tray and dip tray carved from that black marble with white fossils. These dishes have a spiral form, centered of course on a spiral fossil ammonite
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