Lapidarium: The Secret Lives of Stones

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It is visually stunning with very high-quality illustrations and an overall fantastic design of the book. We are reminded of the brave men and women charged and challenged with unearthing these prized minerals often with little to no reward.

The only reason for not giving it 5 stars is that I'm a chemist and would have like to have the chemical formulas for the stones. Behind the glitter of jewellers' windows lies the shadowy back-rooms of polluted water sources, conflict diamonds and the mercury poisoning of artisanal goldworkers.Not yet ready to leave this post-book mental space now lit crystalline and glittering with the fruits of the earth thanks to Hettie’s heady prose, I thought I might ask the author and art historian a few questions–which she kindly answered for me in this blog post https://unquietthings.

Not all the stories are happy - for instance, you'll learn about the past and present abuses involved in the coltan and coal mining industries - but they are such interesting introductions to all kinds of topics you might never have heard of. Each essay isn't actually about a stone, it's a niche tale about people with a connection to the stone in question, and it's the people that the essay focuses on. She regularly talks about art and with artists for museum and gallery events, and has been a visiting lecturer for Goldsmiths University, London and Dauphine University, Paris. As a broadcaster she can been heard (and sometimes seen) on programmes including BBC Radio 4’s Front Row and Art That Made Us.

A supporter of Arts Emergency she has mentored artists and students through a variety of different schemes. It is split into six sections (Stones and Power, Sacred Stones, Stones and Stories, Stone Technology, Shapes in Stone, and Living Stones), and each section reveals a chapter devoted to unearthing an individual stone with imaginative, artful descriptions and a pretty wild, or wildly fascinating story connected to each stone. Unearth the mystery of the tuff statues of Rapa Nui, the lost amber room of Frederick of Prussia and the scandal of Flint Jack.