FREE: Genuine Untreated Lapis Lazuli (Lt Blue) #801110

The listing, Genuine Untreated Lapis Lazuli (Lt Blue) #801110 has ended.

Genuine Lapis Lazuli cabochon cut in Oklahoma, USA.
This Grade C (Light Blue) oval cut stone weighs 38.75 carats and measures 30x21x7.5.

The International Colored Gemstone Association (IGA) has this to say about Lapis Lazuli:
"Lapis lazuli is a gemstone of the kind that might have come straight out of the Arabian Nights: a deep blue with golden inclusions of pyrites which shimmer like little stars.

This opaque, deep blue gemstone has a grand past. It was among the first gemstones to be worn as jewellery and worked on. At excavations in the ancient centres of culture around the Mediterranean, archaeologists have again and again found among the grave furnishings decorative chains and figures made of lapis lazuli – clear indications that the deep blue stone was already popular thousands of years ago among the people of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, Greece and Rome. It is said that the legendary city of Ur on the Euphrates plied a keen lapis lazuli trade as long ago as the fourth millennium B.C., the material coming to the land of the two great rivers from the famous deposits in Afghanistan. In other cultures, lapis lazuli was regarded as a holy stone. Particularly in the Middle East, it was thought to have magical powers.

Countless signet rings, scarabs and figures were wrought from the blue stone which Alexander the Great brought to Europe. There, the color was referred to as 'ultramarine', which means something like 'from beyond the sea'.

It is said that the legendary city of Ur on the Euphrates had a lively lapis lazuli trade as long ago as early fourth millennium B.C, the material coming to the land of the two great rivers from the famous deposits in Afghanistan.
The beautiful blues in paintings from the Renaissance are thanks to the blue lazurite of lapis lazuli.

Ground lapis was the secret of the blue in ultramarine, the pigment which painters used to paint the sea and the sky until the nineteenth century.
Lapis was also popular for inlays.