• A piece of rough yellow leopardskin jasper with a light tan rock background covered in colorful veining bordered with a dark gray. The veining color is in a gradient from yellow on one end to red on the other side.
  • Another angle showing the rock is triangular in shape, and criss-crossed in veins composed of lined-up orbicular patterns. There aren't many stand-alone spherulites that aren't part of the veining.
  • A rectangular side of the piece, with thick colorful veining diagonally across it. Veins are strongly red with gradient down to yellow.
  • Another side of the piece with vibrant red veining and spots crossing it.
  • Captioned "wet," an angled view of the piece wet, showing the more vibrant color of the yellow-to-red color gradient of the veining.
  • Detail view of the veining and orbicular patterning, showing the concentric radial growth patterns. The rock between the colorful pattern is grainy in texture.
  • Captioned "wet," a view of two sides of the piece wet. They have thick bold red stripes running diagonally across them.
  • Captioned "wet," a view of a rectangular side while wet, with gradient coloration in the veining from deep red to light yellow.
  • Captioned "wet," a side of the piece nearly entirely covered in streaky red blocks of color that turn into red veins on a tan background
  • Captioned "wet," a side of the piece while wet with almost all-yellow veining lines with grey, and lightly red-tinted background. Vibrant color, detail of the radial pattern of the spherulites composing the lines is visible
  • Captioned "wet," a detail of the bold yellow veining pattern with round yellow, mustard, and dark gray spherulites aligned in lines. Some have a yellow or red line down the center, and radial growth comes out from that line forming the vein.
  • Scale image of the piece of leopardskin on a measuring mat, showing it is nearly four by three inches long
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Leopardskin jasper with red-to-yellow gradient

Leopardskin jasper with red-to-yellow gradient

$12.00 USD
$12.00 USD
Sale Sold out
Shipping calculated at checkout.

Locale: Mexico

Approx dimensions: 3.75 x 2.75 x 1.75"

Approx weight: 425g

 

Leopardskin jasper is in fact not a true jasper, but a variety of rhyolite. A lot of jaspers are actually rhyolite! Mineralogically jasper is a variety of chalcedony, which is a form of quartz. Rhyolite is in the family tree, an igneous rock composed of quartz and feldspar. 

Leopardskin provides a textbook example of orbicular growth: round 'orb-' or eyeball-like patterns in minerals, often showing multiple rings of color. Alternatively these are called orbicular spherulites; spherulites are minerals composed of dense radial needle-like growth from a point to create a sphere (hence "spher"ulite). Spherulites are typically crystalized feldspar forming within volcanic igneous quartz-based rock. They commonly appear as distinct circles with rings of color as in the case of leopardskin jasper.

Leopardskin can also have veining or bold colorful banding, which covers this piece more than the orbicular pattern. Studied closely, the veins are composed of spherulites. There is a gradient of color in the stripes from golden yellow on one side of the piece to bright red on the other side, for a lovely sunset effect.

Add the rough piece to your collection, drier terrariums, or use as an accent in a succulent bowl. Chunks of rough like this are commonly sold for lapidary purposes, to be polished into tumbles, slabs, carvings, or jewelry. The rough material is already quite beautiful, but colors deepen if polished; images labeled 'wet' preview what to expect if you do wish to polish.

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