MYSTERY OBJECTS

[Gloria]

( she is sooooo specific!)

Ha ha it's my logical mind.

[Tizer]

How about this for a mystery object?

[Cathy]

A cast or model of a babies foot, bit strange tho, it looks like its made from prehistoric rock.

[Stanley]

Tiz, I doubt it!
Is it the foot of a child incinerated at Pompeii?

[Marilyn]

A door stop...
Actually, I've just had a brain wave. Is it a "pot foot", for a pot plant?

[Wendyf]

It looks like pumice stone.

[Cathy]

Finding this all a bit eerie, hope it turns out to be something gentle and fun, even amusing.

[Tizer]

Wendy takes the prize, well done! It's a piece of pumice carved into the shape of a foot, just in case we don't know to use it on our feet. Mrs Tiz arrived back from her shopping and gleefully left it on the kitchen table for me to find. My first thought was identical to Stanley's: "Is it the foot of a child incinerated at Pompeii?" Pumice is a volcanic rock formed when lava at high pressure and high temperature is ejected into the atmosphere and froths like pop from an opened drinks can. The froth immediately solidifies to form the pumice, which contains so much air that it floats on water.

[Stanley]

She would have got me as well!
Try this one....

[Tizer]

One of those flexible thingies for drawing curves.

[Cathy]

Looks like it threads onto something, or around something ??
Yes I can hear you Stanley saying 'Yes, but what?' Sorry I don't know.

[Stanley]

No Cathy, I'm saying bugger Tiz! He's got it straight off!
Next for shaving......?

[Tizer]

Sorry about that, I should've given others a chance! Let's have some guesses at this one then...

[Marilyn]

...Amber ?...

[Tizer]

No!

[Pluggy]

Half sucked gobstopper ?

[Marilyn]

Tortoiseshell?

[Wendyf]

Tigers Eye?

[Marilyn]

Polished wooden button?

[Stanley]

It looks like a polished specimen of something natural. The layers remind me of sedimentary rock or perhaps growth rings in wood or shell.

[Cathy]

I'm with Wendy, it's tigers eye.

[Gloria]

Glasses case???

[Marilyn]

Tizzy...whereforartthou?!?

[Tizer]

Here I am Maz! Well that object prompted plenty of response from you all but Wendy was first with the right answer...tiger's eye (also called tiger eye). You lot are too smart!

Tiger's eye is a mineral that has found favour as a minor gemstone in its polished form but is also very interesting to mineralogists and to collectors like myself. It began life as crocidolite which is known better as one of the forms of blue asbestos which has been mined for a long time. But in some locations the crocidolite changed naturally over geological time into quartz but still retained the appearance of the crocidolite. Tiger's eye is therefore described as `a quartz pseudomorph after crocidolite'. It is no longer dangerous in this pseudomorph form.

There is also hawk's eye which occurs when crocidolite is only partly converted to tiger's eye and it has a blue-grey colour.

To gem collectors tiger's eye is also valued for its chatoyancy which is the cat's eye effect obtained when certain gem minerals are cut `en cabochon'. LINK

You might see tiger eye described as being formed from riebeckite but this is the general name for the group of minerals that includes crocidolite.

[Cathy]

WP_20150825_19_22_05_Pro.jpg

See how you go with this gemstone, what do you think it is?