Friday's Rock! Cerasite aka Sakura Ishi aka Cherry Blossom Stone

Life comes at you fast living in Tokyo. My wife and I were going on a date night last Saturday, but we were having a hard time deciding where to actually go in a city with more restaurants per capita than any city on Earth. Then my wife's twitter feed lit up with posts about a gem show in Asakusabashi. We didn't even know about it but, there it was! So the two of us agreed it would be a great place for a date! Call us gem & mineral otaku. She also noted that there was a spaghetti place just down the street she really wanted to take me to so the stars seemed to be aligning. More on the spaghetti place tomorrow.

While at the mineral show I stocked up on some rare Japanese minerals to bring back to the states to sell. One of the specimens I picked up were these cool cerasites in the matrix.

Cerasite, aka Sakura Ishi, translation Cherry Blossom Stone, are Japanese national treasures that originate in Kyoto. Their trapiche form resembles the much loved sakura petal.

Cerasite is a pseudomorph of cordierite & indialite. A pseudomorph is a mineral that is altered by another mineral through a chemical process. The mineral retains it's original shape, but is replaced by a different mineral. In this case muscovite(mica) replaces the cordierite & indialite resulting in beautiful flower like patterns. 

There are two varieties of cerasite, the regular silvery color, like these, and the rarer pink color which I will present next friday. Both varieties are becoming harder and harder to get a hold of since the collecting location has closed. 2 years ago I could find plenty of them at shows in Japan with about 1 in 4 dealers offering them. Now there are about 2 dealers out of 50-100 at the shows that have them. In the states I am one of the only dealers that has them regularly for sale, but I worry that my sources are drying up as well.

I have these and the pink variety available on my Etsy shop. You can find the link below. They won't last long though so if you are interested don't wait!

Thanks for reading!

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If you love gems and minerals you can visit our shops:
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