Natural Silver Specimens
Posted by Leah on Sep 26, 2006
Considering how much time I spend working with silver, on an almost daily basis, you’d think I might have spent some time learning about where silver comes from, and what it looks like naturally.
For whatever reason, it never occurred to me. I grew up in California, and spent time as a child touring the gold country, so I’ve seen my fair share of gold nuggets, but not silver. Over the weekend, I ran across an article about natural silver in an old copy of Lapidary Journal (from around 5-6 years ago) that featured some images of natural silver. It’s beautiful! The specimens shown in the magazine reminded me of roots, or vines, the way they seemed to be growing and twisting around each other. They were like intricate little organic metal sculptures; in other words, the exact kind of imagery that has inspired many of my silver wire designs. I had no idea I was immitating nature in such a literal sense! Of course, now I’m even more inspired to work on fused silver sculptures, with the images of silver specimens in my mind as inspiration.
Anyway, here are some links to pictures of silver specimens. In addition to the vine-like sculptural specimens that inspired me to look, it comes in various crystal formations too.
Google image search for “Silver Specimens”
mineralgallery.com
irocks.com
