22 
House & Garden 
Two views of a 11th 
Century ostrich cup of 
carved rock crystal 
with silver gilt and 
jeweled mountings 
THE LIMPID LOVELINESS of ROCK CRYSTAL 
In This the Collector Finds a Subject Almost 
as Ancient as Man Himself 
GARDNER TEALL 
T HE limpid loveliness of rock 
crystal has always fascinated the 
mind of man. From the most ancient 
times crystal has been regarded as al¬ 
most precious. In De Poliendis Gem- 
mis, which Theophilus wrote centuries 
ago, one is naively told that crystal is 
water hardened into.ice, and the ice 
of great age hardened into stone! 
Blessed credulity! Still, if Cinderella 
wore crystal slippers, why should the 
unparticular soul sniff at Theophilus! 
Let us leave it to the unimaginative 
and scientifical- 
ly thirsty to content 
themselves with turn¬ 
ing up their noses at 
the absurdity of such 
a thought as ice 
turned to stone. 
his collection,—rock crystal, amethyst, 
rose quartz, citrine, cairngorm and so 
on, but of all this interesting group I 
find rock crystal the loveliest. Agate 
with its varicolored layers, purple 
amethyst, brown aventurine with glit¬ 
tering spangles, green red-speckled 
bloodstone, yellow or brown topaz-like 
Scotch Cctirngorm, Cat's Eye, bluish 
green chrysophase, jasper, banded 
onyx, the clear red sard, and the sard¬ 
onyx—none of these appeals to me as 
does the perfect rock crystal worked 
into artistic form by 
the artist-lapidary. 
What Rock Crystal Is 
They will tell us 
that rock crystal is 
quartz proper. If you 
ask what quartz prop¬ 
er is, you will be edi¬ 
fied with the informa¬ 
tion that it is one of 
three species of the 
most abundant miner¬ 
al in the crust of the 
earth, that it has a vitreous 
lustre, cannot be scratched 
with a knife, but scratches 
glass and has a hardness of 
7 in the degree scale. Fur¬ 
thermore, if you pretend to 
be listening, you will be told 
that “it is insoluble in 
H Cl H 2 S O t or H N 0 3 ” 
and “is not fused by the 
blowpipe, exhibits no cleav¬ 
age, but chips easily with 
conchoidal fracture”! 
I, for one, hopelessly do 
not doubt it, but I still be¬ 
lieve in Cinderella! My 
gem-collecting friend has 
all sorts of quartz proper in 
Carved rock 
crystal and gilt 
drinking horn. 
17 th Century 
Crystal and 
gilt can dl e - 
sticks of Ibth 
Century make 
Specimen of 
rock crystal in 
natural state 
( Center) 
These candle¬ 
sticks are of 
German work¬ 
manship 
An 18 th Century carved 
rock crystal peacock vase 
with silver, enamel and 
jeweled mountings 
Ss 
Pliny on the Subject 
I think old Theo¬ 
philus was but echo¬ 
ing the opinion of an¬ 
cient Pliny who de- 
dared “glaciemque 
esse cerium est.” Pla¬ 
to was equally “cer- 
tum” for he taught 
that in time con- 
den s e d water was 
transformed in¬ 
to stone, following 
Thales who main¬ 
tained that “water is 
the principle, or ori¬ 
gin, of all matter.” 
And how like frozen 
water is a bit of crystal! I 
do not wonder it was a fa¬ 
vorite with the ancients, the 
orientals, and with the mod¬ 
erns. 
With what mysteries it 
lias been invested! Who, 
for instance, has not heard 
of crystal - gazing? The 
learned call it crvstalloman- 
cy and tell us it is “a means 
of divination by the hyp¬ 
notic condition caused by 
gazing fixedly into a crystal, 
mirror, or pool of ink,” a 
practice followed in all ages 
A Japanese crystal gaz¬ 
ing ball with bronze sup¬ 
port of 18 th Century 
workmanship 
