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All auctions / Ethnographic / 88g Picasso Jasper Skull – Street Art from the Depths of...
As dealers and collectors encountering this finely banded stone from Utah for the first time in the late 20th century, they immediately thought of a name that had nothing to do with geology: Pablo Picasso. No mine was named after him, no painter has ever held a piece of it in their hands— the connection is purely visual. The black-gray lines that traverse the light surface indeed seem more drawn than grown, more sprayed than deposited, almost like thrown, carefree strokes on a house wall rather than the calm result of geologic eons. And where Cubism forces eyes, noses, and profiles into positions no real face could ever take, this skull also yields that effect of a "wild Cyclops"— a surface that refuses to fit into a familiar, symmetrical anatomy, and instead asserts its own unsettled visual language. Mineralogically Picasso Jasper, despite the name, is not true jasper, but usually calcite marble – metamorphosed limestone, whose dark, linear drawing formed along finest cracks and contact zones by manganese and iron oxides. The classic collecting region lies in the Mineral Mountains in southern Utah. Material: Picasso Jasper – calcite marble with manganese/iron oxide drawing (not true jasper) Origin: Mineral Mountains, Utah, USA Dimensions: 4.9 x 3.5 x 3.3 cm Weight: 88 g Special features: Distinct, gestural-looking dark line drawing on a light ground; asymmetrical, "cubist"-appearing pattern distributio
Estimate:$1.12
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Estimate:
$1.12
OCT 8 | 3:00 PM
OCT 17 | 10:00 PM
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A French gilt wirework box in the form of a bee skep, second...
10/06/2026
$158.57
Est: $200.53
OCT 8 | 3:00 PM
