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Feldspar & the feldspathoids · Indigo ray
Lapis lazuli
Lapis lazuli is not a mineral at all but a rock, mostly lazurite with calcite and pyrite mixed in, which is why good pieces look like a night sky with stars in it. Nearly all of it, ancient and modern, comes from the Sar-e-Sang mines in Badakhshan, plausibly the longest continuously worked mine on earth.
At a glance
A rock rather than a mineral, from one Afghan valley worked for six thousand years, and the source of the costliest pigment in European painting.
- Composition
- lazurite with pyrite & calcite
- Crystal system
- Cubic (lazurite)
- Hardness
- Mohs 5.5
- Family
- Feldspar & the feldspathoids
- Colour ray
- The indigo ray
- Main sources
- Afghanistan (Sar-e-Sang), Chile, Russia, Pakistan
- Care
- Soft at 5.5, porous, and attacked by acid. Never soak it, never ultrasonic.
Themes
the night sky
insight
study
ultramarine
the far look
What it actually is
A rock, not a mineral. Lapis lazuli is composed mainly of lazurite, a feldspathoid, together with calcite, which appears as white veining, and pyrite, which appears as gold flecks. Sodalite, hauyne and diopside can also be present.
Lazurite's deep blue comes from trisulfur radical ions trapped in the mineral's cage-like structure, which is an unusual colour mechanism. It is not a transition metal effect like most gem colours.
Hardness is around 5.5, but the calcite content makes it softer in places and vulnerable to acid. Lapis is porous, so oils and dyes penetrate it.
The quality hierarchy is straightforward: deep even blue with modest gold pyrite flecking and little white calcite is best, and material with heavy white veining is much cheaper.
Where it comes from
Sar-e-Sang in the Kokcha valley of Badakhshan, in northeastern Afghanistan, has supplied lapis for at least six thousand years and is plausibly the world's longest continuously worked mine. Material from there reached Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Indus Valley in the Bronze Age.
Chile produces material with more white calcite, and Russia's Lake Baikal region and Pakistan also supply it.
The trade route is part of the story. Lapis moving from Badakhshan to Egypt crossed thousands of kilometres of Bronze Age Asia, and its presence in Egyptian tombs is evidence of exchange networks far larger than the objects themselves suggest.
What the traditions claimed
Sumer used lapis heavily. The royal tombs at Ur contained it in quantity, and the Epic of Gilgamesh describes tablets and beards of lapis. Egypt set it in the funerary mask of Tutankhamun and in scarabs and inlay, connecting it with the night sky and with the sky goddess.
The pigment story is the one that reaches furthest. Ground and purified lapis produces ultramarine, meaning from beyond the sea, the most expensive pigment in European painting from the medieval period until a synthetic version was found in 1826. Contracts for altarpieces specified the weight of ultramarine and priced it separately from the painter's fee, and it was reserved for the Virgin's robe because it cost more than gold by weight.
The purification was laborious: the ground rock was kneaded in a wax and resin dough and washed repeatedly to separate blue lazurite from grey impurities.
In Ayurvedic tradition lapis is associated with Saturn as an alternative to blue sapphire. Medieval Europe ground it and prescribed it for melancholy, which is a colour argument.
How it is worked with
The study reading is the useful one, and it is closer to the historical use than the general modern insight framing. Lapis was the stone of scribes, priests and painters, people whose work was looking closely and recording accurately.
It suits questions about seeing a situation properly rather than about acting on it, which distinguishes it from the blue ray's speech reading.
For wear, treat it as a pendant or pocket stone. At 5.5 with soft calcite it abrades quickly in a ring, and sweat, cosmetics and household acids attack it.
Never put it in an ultrasonic cleaner and never soak it. Wipe with a dry or barely damp cloth.
Sodalite is the sensible cheap substitute if you want the colour without the fragility or the price.
Buying it honestly
Lapis is imitated in three main ways.
Dyed jasper, sold as Swiss lapis or German lapis, is the oldest imitation. It looks flat and evenly blue with no pyrite and no calcite.
Reconstituted lapis is genuine powder bound in resin, which under a loupe looks granular and uniformly coloured with no natural veining.
Dyed howlite and dyed magnesite appear at the cheap end, and hardness separates them at once.
Some genuine lapis is dyed to deepen the blue and to hide white calcite. Dye will come off on a cotton bud with acetone, particularly at the drill hole of a bead.
Genuine lapis has irregular gold pyrite specks, unevenly distributed, and usually some white calcite, which lowers the price but confirms the material.
Sodalite is regularly sold as lapis: it has white veining and no gold flecks.
Handle with care
Soft at 5.5, porous, and attacked by acids including sweat and cosmetics. Never soak, never ultrasonic, never steam. Wipe with a dry cloth and keep it away from perfume and cleaning products.
Düşünmək üçün suallar
- What am I refusing to look at properly because looking would oblige me to decide?
- What would the long view of this situation be, and who would I ask for it?
- What in my life travelled a very long way to reach me?
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