By David Nguyendo

This simple yet elegant display of a curved stone is transformed into a figure stone in this orientation. The addition of a small rounded pebble helps this display to convey an image of a woman with a newborn child. It is the ability of a stone to evoke feelings and cause the viewers to see something greater than just a small curved stone that is the essence of viewing stone appreciation. 

I bought this stone in 2017 while I was in Central Vietnam with a tour group. The gentleman who sold me this stone said he collected it at the Srepok river in Vietnam's Central Highlands. This river is a tributary of the Mekong River. I named this stone "Mother and Child" because it reminds me of the local legend that said every evening, a wife with her child sitting at the cliff of the mountain and facing toward the ocean, waits for her husband to return home from a distant war. Many boats came by every evening but still no sign of her husband returning home. In the end, the mother and child kept waiting and waiting until they turned into stone.

The stone dimensions are approximately 20.3 cm (8 inches) high, 12.7 cm (5 inches) wide, and 6.35 cm (2.5) inches deep.