Rock Hounds
"A question from when I was a little girl that I can answer only now: are rocks made, or are they born? Answer: rocks are.”
--Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector
Do you have an interest in finding, collecting, and studying rocks? If so, you just might be a rock hound.
If you're not sure, try answering some of these questions from Mineralogy4Kids:
A rock hound owns more pieces of quartz than underwear.
A rock hound thinks the primary function of road cuts are for easy rock and mineral collecting.
Rock hounds tend to lick rocks in order to bring out all of the wonderful natural colors.
A rock hound would rather attend the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show than visit Hawaii.
Rock hounds ALWAYS find themselves examining individual rocks in driveway gravel.
Jan and Nelson Avery of Arizona Agate are true rock hounds. (See our previous blog post on the Averys here.) They travel throughout Arizona and New Mexico to find some of the most beautiful and unusual stones and crystals in the area.
The Sedona Artist Market is proud to display the Averys' amazing collection.
Pink Halite: Also referred to as rock salt, pink halite crystals are formed through repeated episodes of seawater evaporation in areas where there are large basins, such as near the Dead Sea, Salt Lake City, and Searles Lake in California.
Super 7 Crystal: This naturally formed and rare crystal contains amethyst, cacoxinite, clear quartz, lepidocrocite, quartz, rutile, and smoky quartz. It is only found in the Espirito Santo region of Brazil, north of Rio De Janeiro.
Peacock Ore: Also called bornite, this remarkably iridescent stone is a copper ore mineral with a rusty brown appearance that tarnishes to shades of blue and purple. The Averys' collection is from Zacatecas, Mexico, but this stone can also be found in Montana, Cornwall, Morocco, and Kazakhstan.
Amethyst: February's birthstone, amethyst comes in a range of color from light lavender to rich, dark purple. It is mainly mined in Brazil, where it occurs in large geodes within volcanic rocks.
Calcite/Mexican Onyx: Onyx refers to any parallel banded variety of chalcedony. Mexican onyx, however, is a form of travertine or tufa that exhibits color banding from layer deposition.
Septarian Stone: This "concretion" stone was formed around 50-70 million years ago. Concretions are hard, compact masses of matter formed by the precipitation of mineral cement within the spaces between particles, and are found in sedimentary rock or soil.
Labradorite: (see our blog post here). The unique iridescence of this grayish stone led to the creation of a new word: labradorescence. The quality, hue, and brilliance of the labradorescence varies from one specimen to another and within a single specimen. Stones with exceptional color are often given the name "spectrolite."
Stop by and visit our favorite rock hounds, the Averys, and their display at Booth 49.