Blue stone

“ The blue variety is cut as a gem stone, and often resembles blue spinel, though its softness distinguishes it from spinel and sapphire. It is a brilliant stone, with high refractive index, and is strongly dichroic, being pale when viewed parallel to the principal axis and dark when viewed transversely. ”

“ Ronan, fenced with a stone wall round; and they take care to keep it neat and clean, and sweep it every day. There is an altar in it, on which there lies a big plank of wood, about ten feet in length; every foot has a hole in it, and in every hole a stone, to which the natives ascribe several virtues: one of them is singular, as they say, for promoting speedy delivery to a woman in travail.” The blue stone in Fladda, already referred to in connection with wind-charms, did duty as an oath-stone, and likewise as a curing-stone, its special function being to remove stitches in the side. ”

“ A confidant somewhat resembling these blue stones is the stone talisman to which the heroine of No. 15, "The Maiden with the Rose on her Forehead," tells the story of her wrongs,—how she has been killed, and hidden away in an iron chest in a secret chamber of the Bluebeard story type, and scorched all over with a hot iron, after having been brought back to life and the light of day, to the temporary destruction of her beauty. ”

“ The waters of this placid subterranean lake are the brightest, loveliest blue that can be imagined. They are as transparent as plate glass, and their coloring would shame the richest sky that ever bent over Italy. No tint could be more ravishing, no lustre more superb. Throw a stone into the water, and the myriad of tiny bubbles that are created flash out a brilliant glare like blue theatrical fires. Dip an oar, and its blade turns to splendid frosted silver, tinted with blue. Let a man jump in, and instantly he is cased in an armor more gorgeous than ever kingly Crusader wore. ”

“ Instead of using sand and gravel, or both, in combination with cement, for floor and roof construction, the preliminary experiments that proved the superior value of broken blue-stone for massive work, led to the adoption of washed, fine screenings from the same material for the floors and roofs, because its greater angularity insured a stronger bond in the work than could be realized by using sand and gravel. ”

“ Lines which are lovely in the pearly film of the Nautilus shell, are lost in the grey roughness of stone; and those which are sublime in the blue of far away hills, are weak in the substance of incumbent marble. ”

“ At intervals the workmen pause to look at the diamonds, to see how they are getting on. We observe them at a little distance, and notice the adamantine luster of the facets. Already it is possible to pick out an uncommonly fine stone by its cold, steel-blue light. ”

“ Friday and Venus were represented by blue, and the celestial-hued sapphire was the stone in which this color appeared in all its beauty. Blue was a fit symbol of the age of childhood, but it is less easy to understand the choice of the goat as the animal associated with the color. The significant number was six. Natural science, the contemplation of the heavens and of the heavenly bodies, and the study of stellar influences were all typified by blue.
Green signified for men joyousness, transitory hope, and the decline of friendship; for women, unfounded ambition, childish delight, and change. ”

“ The white is a very beautiful Stone, of a fine Grain, and equal Hardness, with many Kinds of the red: it is not perfectly white, but rather what we call a Pearl Colour, white with a slight Admixture of blue. The yellow is a very beautiful Stone, often of a fine Flame Colour, and more transparent than either of the former; this is found in the East Indies and Bohemia only. The last, or Beryll Carnelian, is properly the Male Oriental Kind ”

“ Cause of Color in Minerals. In Lesson III. we saw that many gem materials cause light that enters them to divide and take two paths within the material. Now all transparent materials absorb light more or less; that is, they stop part of it, perhaps converting it into heat, and less light emerges than entered the stone. If light of all the rainbow colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet) is equally absorbed, so that there is the same relative amount of each in the light that comes out as in the light that went into a stone, we say that the stone is a white stone ”

“ The natural red of the stone which forms the lower walls is artificially deepened in the panels, and the traces of blue and green tints remaining, together with silvery and brown incrustations of lichen in the upper parts, give a wonderful richness to the whole. ”

“ Yellow hues of different degrees, from pale to a rich sherry tint (Plate I, Fig. 9) , are common, and pure pale blue (Plate I, Fig. 7) and pale green stones, which often pass as aquamarine, are far from rare. Natural, red and pink, stones are very seldom to be met with. It is, however, a peculiarity of the brownish-yellow stones from Brazil that the colour is altered by heating to a lovely rose-pink. Curiously, the tint is not apparent when the stone is hot, but develops as it cools to a normal temperature; the colour seems to be permanent. Such stones are common in modern jewellery. ”

“ It is the ever-changing nuance that chiefly attracts the eye; now a brilliant flash of purest white, anon97 a gleam of cerulean blue, waxing to richest orange and dying in a crimson glow, all intermingled with the manifold glitter from the surface of the stone. Absolute cleanliness is essential if the full beauty of any stone is to be realized, but this is particularly true of diamond. If the back of the stone be clogged with grease and dirt, as so often happens in claw-set rings, light is no longer wholly reflected from the base ”

“ Our sapphire is a bluish transparent variety of native crystalline aluminum oxide, the same corundum that when it is red we call a ruby. The sapphire may be sky blue or cornflower blue, and shade through the lighter hues to an almost colorless stone, called white or water sapphire. ”

“ By their judicious use the colour of a stone may often be modified and improved. Thus, by placing a yellow foil under a green stone that turns too much on the blue, or a red one under a stone turning too much on the crimson, the hues will be brightened and enriched in proportion. ”

“ If you take Blue Smalt, you shall find, that to afford the deepest Blue, which cæteris paribus has the greatest particles or sands; and if you further divide, or grind those particles on a Grindstone, or porphyry stone, you may by comminuting the sands of it, dilute the Blue into as pale a one as you please, which you cannot do by laying the colour thin; for wheresoever any single particle is, it exhibits as deep a Blue as the whole mass. ”

“ The colouring matter is not always even, but is often spread over the substance of the stone in scabs or "splotches," which rather favours imitation, and, where this unevenness occurs, it may be necessary to cut or divide the stone, or so to arrange the form of it that the finished stone shall be equally blue throughout. ”

“ Others wrangled about the stone itself, and about its colour. Some said that it was blue; others that it was green; others that it was black. At last some were found who said it was of changeable colour, and that according to the thing that touched it, it appeared differently. Some advised that the stone should be broken up into bits; when it had been pulverised, then could one see its essence. Others allowed not this. Others, going farther, said that this stone caused but strife. It should be taken down and removed; then would they more easily compose their differences. ”

“ The stone varies from translucent to opaque, and from colorless to white, the essential feature being the blue opalescent light or chatoyancy exhibited from a polished surface. Good moonstones are worth from three to five dollars a carat. ”

“ It was then discovered that, despite the colour, the stones had the physical characters, not of sapphire, but of the species closely allied to it, namely, spinel, aluminate of magnesium. By an unsurpassable effort of nomenclature these blue stones were given the extraordinary name of ‘Hope sapphire,’ from fanciful analogy with the famous blue diamond which was once the pride of the Hope collection. A blue spinel is occasionally found in nature, but the actual tint is somewhat different. These manufactured stones have the disadvantage of turning purple in artificial light. ”

“ Commentators are not agreed whether that which we call the genuine sapphire, a transparent stone of a beautiful sky-blue colour, in hardness and value next to the diamond, is meant by ‏סַפִּיר‎; or the sapphire of the ancients, which, according to Pliny, (Hist. Nat. xxxvii. 39; Theophrast. De Lapid. 231,) is a stone of a pure blue colour, and has frequently pebble spots of a golden yellow hue, which were formerly thought to be really gold, and is evidently our lapis lazuli, lazure-stone. ”

“ Blue spinels are infrequently seen in commerce. They never equal the fine sapphire in their color, being more steely. They, of course, lack dichroism and are softer than sapphire as well as lighter.
3. Blue tourmalines are never of fine sapphire blue. The name indicolite which [91] mineralogists give to these blue stones suggests the indigo-blue color which they afford. The marked dichroism of tourmaline will also help detect it. Some tourmalines from Brazil are of a lighter shade of blue and are sometimes called "Brazilian sapphires." ”

“ People would have been apt to object to any pursuit of abstract harmonies of color, which might have induced him to paint his hawthorn blue.
§ XLV. In the same way, whenever the subject of the sculpture was definite, its color was of necessity definite also; and, in the hands of the Northern builders, it often became, in consequence, rather the means of explaining and animating the stories of their stone-work, than a matter of abstract decorative science. Flowers were painted red, trees green, and faces flesh-color; the result of the whole being often far more entertaining than beautiful. ”

“ The diamond is the hardest stone known; it is also the only stone known which is really combustible. It is of true adamantine lustre, classed by experts as midway between the truly metallic and the purely resinous. In refractive power and dispersion of the coloured rays of [Pg 81] light, called its fire, it stands pre-eminent. It possesses a considerable variety of colour; that regarded as the most perfect and rare is the blue-white colour. ”

“ The last group, which comprises opaque stones, has a single representative among ordinary gem-stones, namely, turquoise. In this case light is scattered and reflected from layers immediately contiguous to the surface, and the colour is due to the resulting absorption. The apparent darkness of a deep-coloured stone follows from a different cause: the light passing into the stone is wholly absorbed within it, and, since none is emitted, the stone appears black. The claims of turquoise are maintained by the blue variety; there is little demand for stones of a greenish tinge. ”

“ When the commissionaire had gone, Holmes took up the stone and held it against the light. “It’s a bonny thing,” said he. “Just see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and focus of crime. Every good stone is. They are the devil’s pet baits. In the larger and older jewels every facet may stand for a bloody deed. This stone is not yet twenty years old. It was found in the banks of the Amoy River in southern China and is remarkable in having every characteristic of the carbuncle, save that it is blue in shade instead of ruby red. ”

“ What bursts of thrilling eloquence—the unsophisticated{?} language of nature—gathering all its metaphors fresh and glowing from her own rich store-house—the flowers, the forests, and the woods{?}—the sun, the stars, and the blue sky—the winds, the earthquake, and the storm—must there have been poured forth but to die away upon the ears that heard them. ”

“ Charms against the Evil Eye.
2. Necklace of onyx beads. Early Christian.
The sapphire, the lapis-lazuli, and other blue stones, with a hue resembling the blue of the heavens, were believed to exert a tonic influence, and were supposed to counteract the wiles of the spirits of darkness and procure the aid and favor of the spirits of light and wisdom. These gems were usually looked upon as emblems of chastity, and for this reason the sapphire came to be371 regarded as especially appropriate for use in ecclesiastical rings. Among purple stones, the amethyst is particularly noteworthy. ”

“ Why make so much of fragmentary blue
In here and there a bird, or butterfly,
Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,
When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue? ”

“ While the outside of this heap of fragments is white, with tints of green, touched here and there with what seems to be the most delicate bronze and gilding; every crevice, where there is a shadow lurking, is a blue, the purity and softness of which cannot be described nor easily imagined. To one who has any feeling for color, it has a sentiment as sweet as any thing in all visible nature. A pure, white surface, like this fine opaque ice, seen through deep shade produces blue, and such a blue as one sees in the stainless sky when it is full of warmth and light. ”

“ You may see at first little more than flat surfaces of pleasantly mottled white and purple-grey, translucent, but comparatively dull and dead. Then, as the sun creeps round the corner, a strange life comes into them. The white and palest greys begin to glow, and turn by slow degrees to pearly-pink, which kindles into gold, and deepens in the duskier parts to copper-red. The stronger markings of the stone now show out in unsuspected strength, and the lighter veins take on by contrast a greenish tint, so that the warm colour is subtly shot with its cool counterpart. ”