Give those photos a little time to download - it's a huge stone!
Wow - words really fail me on this piece. This is one of the single largest Hubbard Basin petrified wood sculptures we've tackled in a few years. This stone is over 17" wide at the base and weighs nearly 15 lbs! It's a stunning gray, gold, black, pink, blue and white polished gemstone and is actually a gigantic cross section of a massive petrified spruce log! This piece really is perfect for a mantel or display alcove. It's large and absolutely beautiful! It is also one of the biggest, fanciest and showiest Hubbard Basin stand-up specimens I've offered this year! This museum class petrified log is cut with the heart of the gnarled log nicely centered and the growth rings very visible through the entire, brilliantly colored specimen!! You can make out knots pretty easily when you begin to study the wood grain in this magnificent fossil gem. My camera doesn't always capture detail in lighter colored stones well, but this one shows finely preserved growth rings from the original tree all the way through the polished agate face. The rind is naturally articulated while teh back and base are cut smooth and flat but otherwise unfinished. The display face is a mirror polished window into a tree that grew millions of years ago! The finish brings out both the gemmy color and the minute growth structure to provide for a truly captivating contrast that will forever capture the imagination of all who pause to study it. The antiquated, contorted exterior contrasts so nicely with the pure gem grade agate inside it's just hard to believe it's real!! This mantel piece represents one of our all time best and largest stand-ups cut from one of the finest Hubbard Basin logs you'll see!!
This is really an excellent, very high quality fossil specimen from Nevada's Hubbard Basin. The wood found there is some of the most colorful in the world, rivaling the popular Arizona specimens in color variety, but tending more toward blue & gold than red. They are superior to the Arizona specimens in wood grain preservation. This wood grain and color combination is unique in the petrified wood world and is what makes this location one of the most sought after among wood collectors. These pieces have a very high agate content so the specimens always take a fantastic polish that flashes like a mirror in the sunlight! This piece is high grade, even for Hubbard Basin - it has a really rich blue agate with wispy golds & reds accented with spider webs of black! All of the color patterns accent the wood grain details that follow the growth rings of the original tree! There's even a few hints of pink and other hues to really set the colors off! The agate is translucent enough that the colored mineral regions appear to form plumes that grow deep into this ancient fossil, disappearing down into the glassy surface. It's cut to stand erect on a flat base and shows the entire cross section of the log. It's a lot harder to do this and make it come out right but this one really shows off the wood in grand style! This stone has been professionally cut and polished on a special lap that produces a flat face and a mirror perfect shine. The polish really is liquid perfect - a difference in the quality products Sticks-in-Stones has built its reputation on! The base is cut flat and then the face is cut at a sloping angle to make for easy display. Our stand-ups are always cut from larger, heavier pieces of petrified wood that can safely be handled and not present any serious risk of breakage. This is an extra large display piece - it would look great on a mantle. Measure about 8 1/2" tall and roughly 17 1/4" wide across the mirror polished face. It's about 1 3/4" thick at the base. Weight is about 14.74 lbs. Another Sticks-in-Stones Lapidary quality stone collectible from eBay's Original Rockshop!