GORGEOUS GOLDEN Tropical 8" Petrified Wood Specimen - Beck Collection

Regular price $95.00

This piece is a bit of a puzzle to me. It came to me as part of the Beck collection. It's a well preserved tropical hardwood with good sized pores that aren't too dense. The microphoto I've included in the listing shows the wood grain clearly but it does not quite exactly match any of my reference photos. It probably comes closest to mahogany but is not really exactly right for that either. What it undeniably is is gorgeous! The wood is very highly opalized and polishes (and looks) much like the best of the golden oaks from Stinking Water Creek in Oregon. The warm, rich glowing color and even the rind is very close to what those specimens often look like. Those bands you see in the microphoto are not the growth rings but rather bands that are parallel to the growth rings with many iterations between each annual ring. The more technically inclined call this aliform parenchyma forming confluent bands. There are a few tropical hardwood that look like this including padauk, basralocus and rosewood in modern species but the other features such as the growth rings, density and distribution of the pores and the fine rays keep this from being a direct match to any of those. The structure in this one isn't quite exactly any of those but it could well be a cousin. This log was dug in Indonesia and represents some of the higher quality and more beautiful of the petrified wood that comes from that region. What is not in dispute is that the piece is lovely, fairly complete and nicely shaped with great growth rings preserved and revealed in the mirror polished face. The darkest central area is punky and debris filled as the log appeared to have started to decay either while growing or after being felled. There are some small chips around the edges but this is really a nice, clean specimen, particularly given the very high opal content. This log came to us as bart of the Beck Collection and is just the latest rare treasure we've had the privilege of finishing in our shop!

If you're an established petrfied wood collector than you have almost certainly purchased pieces from Bob and Dan Beck, either directly or through the rockshops they supplied. They have been fixtures at Quartzite for decades and Dan was also regularly set up at the Tucson and Denver shows. Bob Beck began his Oregon rockhounding career about the time I was born, back when Kennedy was still President! Like most rockhounds, he began casually and his first piece of equipment was a rock tumbler that he'd bought for his daughter\. He soon found he loved it more than she did. He followed the passion and by the time his son Dan was in high school, Bob already had a small commercial operation producing lapidary art and jewelry pieces. His son was quickly enlisted in the nascent family business where the bug also took hold. When Bob decided to pursue lapidary full time, Dan said he'd help for a year to get it going. That year stretched to 45 and the family became one of the great anchors of Pacific Northwest petrified wood lapidary artists. It's hard to say for certain, but my guess is that these guys made more petrified wood bookends over the years than all of the other Pacific Northwest lapidary studios combined! Dan kept the business going on his own in more recent years as his dad's health and age limited his participation, but he recently retired from the business himself. Like most of the old breed rockhounds, they were some of the nicest and sincerest people you could hope to meet or trade with. I've purchased the bulk of his inventory including tons of rough raw material and a few boxes of premium finished pieces as well as several others in various stages of production. This piece is one that Dan produced and as you'll see, the quality of his work is every bit as good as those we produce here at Sticks in Stones Lapidary. Dan is the only lapidary I know that appears to be as completely, even obsessively focused on perfect finishes as I am. His shop utilized the same processes in the same steps that I use in my own shop. I can honestly say that there is nothing in my skill set that would make better collector pieces than those Dan produced. Like me, he strived for a perfect mirror finish that just glistens to help make every fantastic specimen all it should be!

This nice specimen is a full round with great structural preservation. The petrified wood from both Indonesia and Myanmar is quite different from those specimens I find here in the Pacific Northwest. As my own interests gravitate towards variety in species as much as locations you can imagine how exciting it is to be able to expand my collection in new dimensions with these fascinating tropical species! I hope you'll take this chance to do the same and obtain one of these nice collector sized slabs for your own collection! As I learn more about species I'll update my listings but for now the specifics remain a mystery. It took a great polish which really brings out every detail in the finely patterned cell structure which is easily visible under a hand lens. At first glance, this wood appears to be a typical hardwood, but under magnification the cell structure looks more complicated and unusual by North American standards. What I can tell you is that it's beautiful and very well prepared so you end up with a world class specimen for your own collection and study!

This piece measures about 7 7/8" across the polished face and is roughly 0.44" thick. Weight is 1.06 lbs. Stands sold separately.

A nice, unique natural wonder collectible exclusively from Sticks-in-Stones Lapidary!