Modern Suiseki

Colorful stones-I

Colorful stone is one of categories of Suiseki. As its name suggests, it is colorful stone.

In Japan, there are several places that colorful stones are found and most of them are jasper.

The hardness of jasper is about 7 in Mohs' scale of hardness. It is hard enough that takes a high polish.

Further, jasper has a tendency to have clear colors and it is beautiful to an untrained eye. So, jasper is quite popular stone.

Though, in Suiseki, in general, the real pleasure of Suiseki is to feel calm Wabi-Sabi. So, bright color is not suitable for Suiseki.

Nevertheless, jasper having bring color is very few.

The following photo is three Toki-ishi, woody jasper, which has different color.

It is interesting that the each woody jasper has distinct difference color although all the three stones were used to be wood in ancient times.

So, I would like introduce colorful stones.

Red jasper

Here is jasper from Shonai river in Central Japan.

upstream Shonai river is called Toki river and it is famous for Toki-ishi which are found in the river.

Although Toki-ishi is woody jasper in the narrow sense, there are jaspers which are not come from wood but volcanic in Toki/Shonai river.

This is because there is no traces of wood but rough texture.

It looks like volcanic jasper. Watching this stone carefully, it looks like fluid containing abundant silica was cooled and solidified although it is not lava itself.

Red and black jasper

The following stone is also from Shonai river:

This stone is also rough on the surrounding part and looks like volcanic jasper.

This jasper has both red and black colors and makes me feel strength. Further, the shape looks like a bull and making an impressive view.

Toki-ishi, Woody jasper

Although the above two jaspers are considered to be volcanic jasper, the following jasper seems to be woody jasper:

The shape of this jasper looks like a trunk of a tree.

This is top view.

The small holes seem to be traces of xylem vessels.

Surface texture seems to be smoother than volcanic jasper.

Five colors jasper from Aoiwa seaside in Aomori

Subsequently, the next jasper is not from Shonai river but from Aoiwa seaside in Aomori, located in the northeastern portion of Honshu, the largest island of Japan.

Aomori is famous for jasper mining. I assume that most of them are volcanic jaspers.

This jasper contains three colors as black, yellow and red in one stone. It is called Five colors jasper in the local area and prized by collectors.

You may think why it is called Five colors. Because it is an eulogistic name. Actually, there are several stones called Five colors jasper in Japan, however, most of them do not have five colors.

Even if jasper, it is rare having several colors in one stone.

Here, I explained jasper as colorful stones-I Jasper is very beautiful stone and I loved it.

So, I would like to explain it in detail in another chance.