Modern Suiseki

About Unknown stones

In the late fifties and sixties, due to the latest Suiseki boom in Japan, many stones were picked up from famous rivers. Further it should be the same situation in usual rivers and many stones were inported from overseas in that period.

Therefore, existing many unknown stones today is something natural. There is a history in stones but nobody knows it.

I would like to introduce unknown stones here,

China relief stones

This stone was got from an antique store in Saitama by auction. I am not sure if this smooth surface of the stone is polished by hand or by sea.

Since a small quartz was caught in the gap of the stone, it may be unnatural if it was polishing material. On the other hand, since mud was there in the bottom of the quartz, it may be polished by sea naturally.

In either case, I have never seen this kind stone before. It looks like Tsushima Kamon-seki but spiral patterns which are the distinguishing characteristic of the stone were not observed.

As a result of further study, I found a similar stone in the introductory book of Suiseki, authored by Arishige Matsuura. Ih the book, it is introduced as 中国浮雕石 Chugoku-Fusui-ishi.

"浮雕" means relief in Chinese.

Actually, the patterns in the stone look like relief.

That is a very good expression.

Since I could find a similar stone only in the book, this type of stone has not been imported many or rare in the first place.