SiS: GIGANTIC 15"+ Ultra-Rare BURMESE Petrified Wood Round from MYANMAR

This slab comes from the single largest log that we imported last year from Myanmar.  We've found a new source for quality petrified wood specimens and have been off on a series of adventures trying to secure some of these new petrified logs!  It took several trips and a lot of logistics but we finally managed to get the shipment here to work into specimens in our shop!  It looks very much like some of the well preserved hardwoods found here in the Pacific Northwest, but it comes from halfway around the world in central Burma!  The species is unknown to me - the pores are relatively large and sparse, a bit like some of the rosewood examples I've seen but not exactly like those either.  Many of the tropical hardwoods looks something like this so it's difficult for me to say what species it is with my amateur identification skills.  This large slab would make an excellent table top or can be wall mounted with our hidden aluminum french cleat system (sold separately).  There are some stabilized fracture lines but the piece is quite strong and solid.  I've polished this nicely preserved fossil wood into a beautiful, perfectly prepared specimen with our signature lapidary work.  It is entirely possible that this is all of the stone we'll ever be able to obtain from this location, so don't miss a chance at something truly unique and beautiful for your collection!

It is always difficult to find a fair price for something new, made even more complicated in this case by the uncertainty of whether I'll ever be able to obtain any more of it.  The direct costs involved in obtaining the small amount of material I was able to fly home with as samples cannot be recovered from the stone I obtained, even at the price point of a rare collectible.  I just want to try to set expectations accurately for what may or may not come to pass from a supply perspective.   I am actively trying to navigate the very complex trade requirements of Myanmar to purchase a larger shipment of these stones, and if I am successful, I should be able to offer a nice variety of choice specimens at a more competitive price later.  If I am not, then the sale of the few slabs I will part with from these two logs will be brief and I will at least have been able to share a bit of the experience of trying to find new stones to share with a few of our collector friends and offset a small fraction of the costs involved in tracking them down.  A small taste of that story follows... 

Last year on a trip to Asia I made a chance discovery that has started a nearly year long odyssey to track down a new source for petrified wood.  I met a fellow with a family connection in Myanmar.  I had heard rumors for years about petrified logs in Burma, but the only ones I had ever seen were in a market in Shanghai.  Those logs were prohibitively expensive, but absolutely fascinating and, best of all, highly agatized.  One of the most difficult things to assess with a potential new source for logs is whether the material is agatized enough to produce good specimens.  But I was a bit more optimistic in this case as I had high hopes that the nicely silicified logs I'd seen in China were in fact Burmese logs.  Since then I've made two trips to Myanmar to examine the material and meet the people digging it.  Most of what they dig is still exported to China as viewing stones, some of them towering much higher than me!  These are typically not cut, but polished on one vertical face to follow the contours of the log which are then sold as tree jade (though the material is opal and agate and not jade at all).  I visited the villages where these stones were being dug and worked by the local craftsmen.  Aside from being thatched huts with open sides, these compounds look a lot like my place with rock piled up everywhere!  But among the overgrown piles of stone (filled with giant blue scorpions no less!) were some choice full logs of what appeared to be very well preserved petrified wood.  I eventually managed to secure two smaller logs that I could fly back with in my luggage to cut and polish and prove out the stone I was seeing.  As exciting as it always is for me to work with a new source of petrified wood, I was very pleasantly surprised to find fine structure and very polishable specimens in these two logs, though each was preserved very differently and clearly from different sites.

While these adventures provide a certain degree of color in my own life, I ultimately do it for my own passion for these amazing stones and the ancient stories they tell.  I have not been able to date any of these logs yet (but I will continue to work on it and share that info when I have it).  It is my sincere hope that a rare and uncommon specimen for your own collection as the fruits of these early endeavors to find a new source will be something you can enjoy as well.  Trust me, it sounds like a lot more fun than it is as it has taken my body a couple of solid weeks to recover from each trip to a country that has only recently begun to open itself up through a series of highly published political and economic changes that they are still struggling with. 

This is a perfect and complete round taken from a well preserved petrified log that shows great structure under magnification.   It's cut from the center of a nicely shaped log that reveals the original growth patterns of the tree in beautiful detail. This specimen has been carefully polished to show off all the gemmy detail inside. It's another one of those beautiful fossil treasures that some happy Sticks-in-Stones customer is going to flip over!