My little lapis lazuli peice.
Ultra, “the far side.” Marine, “of the sea.” The colour named for the journey of lapis lazuli, from the far side of the sea to the palette…
People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks
Etymology: Lapis was the Latin word for stone and Lazuli from the Medieval Latin Lazulum coming from the Arabic Lazaward coming from the Persian Lazhward, the name of the place where lapus lazuli was mined.
The best place for mining lapis, is found in limestone in the province of Badakhshan in north eastern Afghanistan, a mining place for over 6,000 years. The ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamian civilizations and later the Greeks and Romans mined there. It has been used to make carvings, mosaics, architecture (in the walls and columns of churches and palaces), and of course, ground to make pigment for tempera paint called “ultramarine” and more rarely, in oil paint. It’s usage in oil paint ended in the 19th century when it became possible to produce a synthetic variety of course more economically viable and what we call “French Ultramarine”.
lapis lazuli with traces of pyrite
Lapis is a rock, not a mineral, and so is a composite of many minerals. More valuable lapis does not contain veins of white calcite or flecks of pyrite, which, if you look closely in my picture above, you can see.
Reading People of the Book has reminded me of my fascination with rocks and minerals and fossils and ancient pigments and their history. In my fourth year at OCAD, I did a lot of reading on it and meant to produce a body of work on it. I became so bogged down by text, I sort of gave up, and ironically made paintings with only the slightest hint of colour – a sort of muddy ground where “Life” has not yet been born, but contains the promise of Life to come, if that makes any sense.
Lapis Lazuli and the Murex
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