lapis lazuli (some blue loving)

Yellow sapphires and lapis lazuli set in 18K gold

Lapis lazuli and emerald cabochons with 18K gold settings

Lapis lazuli and painted-snail shells with 18K gold settings

First, a warm welcome to my new followers! (Καλωσορίσατε ! )

I love cufflinks! If I was a guy it would be something I would love to wear and possibly be fussy about or start a collection. The above three pairs from Villa Collection lapis lazuli cufflinks are available on www.couturelab.com where all things are possible.

Lapis lazuli was often used in prestigious and priceless Byzantine mosaic icons but the earliest examples are from Mesopotamia and Egypt.

 let's go through some images of this spectacular masterpiece of nature.

Boucheron watch s/s 2011

lapis lazuli vase at the hermitage museum, Russia

lapis lazuli box

wonderful mosaic tie tack!..I lost the link here..

medallion from Greece, via

Some ancient masterpieces...

Standard of Ur, Mesopotamia

King Tut's Solid Gold Mask, Ancient Egypt

 

Gold Vessel in the Form of an Ostrich Egg (Mesopotamian, ca. 2550-2400 B.C.

St Theodore, Stratilates
(featured previously on this blog here)

Some interesting main facts from Wikipedia, whole article here

Description
Lapis lazuli is a rock, largely formed from the mineral lazurite.....Lapis lazuli usually occurs in crystalline marble as a result of contact metamorphism.
Etymology
Lapis is the Latin for "stone" and lazuli the genitive form of the Medieval Latin lazulum, which is from the Arabic لازورد lāzaward, which is ultimately from the Persian لاژورد lāzhward, the name of a place where lapis lazuli was mined.^[5][6] Taken as a whole, lapis lazuli means "stone of Lāzhward". The name of the place came to be associated with the stone mined there and, eventually, with its color. The English word azure, the French azur, the Italian azzurro, the Polish lazur and the Spanish and Portuguese azul are cognates.
Uses
Lapis takes an excellent polish and can be made into jewelry, carvings, boxes, mosaics, ornaments, and vases. It was also ground and processed to make the pigment ultramarine for tempera paint and, more rarely, oil paint. Its usage as a pigment in oil paint ended in the early 19th century when a chemically identical synthetic variety, often called French ultramarine, became available.