Components

*Ocean jasper cut by Gary Wilson
*Sterling bezels and posts
*Signed

Length: 1 3/8" (3.5 cm)
Weight: 5.6 gm (a nickel weighs about 5 gm)

Photo: Melinda Holden

Item #475 - $198

Ocean Jasper Earrings

Ocean Jasper Earrings
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Ocean jasper comes in a wide variety of colors and usually has these orbicular patterns. These lovely stones have beautiful contrasting colors and rich patterns in an ideal scale for earrings.

Ocean jasper was found at only one location in the world, on the shoreline near Morovato, Madagascar. According to the chronology given at ozarkrockexchange.com (which is no longer online), apparently the stone has been known since journal articles appeared about it in 1922. In 1955 a specimen from Madagascar appeared in Paris where Paul Obeniche was studying at the museum. He spent the next 40 years looking for the source. At age 70, he planned his last expedition to cover the entire northwest coastline and luckily he approached Morovato at low tide, the only time the deposit is visible, and he found it! Collecting could only be done at low tide, and the material had to be removed from the roadless area by boat. The stones finally appeared on the market in 2000 and the deposit now seems to have been depleted.

The deposit started out as a rhyolitic lava flow which was gradually replaced by quartz in much the same way that petrified wood develops. However, nobody knows the source of the eruption that produced it. So these little stones played hide and seek for 100 years, and have quite a history they haven't revealed yet. Won't you order these citizens of the world and perhaps they will tell you of their adventures! Or perhaps they will lead you on your own adventure...