CONTEMPORARY CORNER
NEW DISPLAYS, NEW IDEALS
Our purpose is to establish an ongoing international dialogue about contemporary displays that will help to promote stone appreciation. We encourage members of the global viewing stone community to create new ways of displaying stones that reflect your life in the 21st century, your regional geology, your customs, craft and culture. Unfamiliar types of stones, bases, accessories and materials are welcome. We are not confined to displaying viewing stones in either the traditional Japanese or Chinese manner. These are options available to us and we should respect and acknowledge the established ways of displaying stones, but they are not the only way. It is timely to explore exciting new options to create stone displays that have bases, display tables, and other accessories that reflect our regional and national arts and crafts.
“Harvest Moon in Starry Sky”
By Paul A. Harris
This small basaltic pebble (8cm x 5cm) with a round remnant of a quartz vein features a particularly realistic image of a full moon, complete with craters. The white-flecked texture lets one imagine the full moon floating in star-filled sky.
The moon in a stone evokes two ideas. First, just as viewing stones are often small scale versions of mountains or landscapes, every rock can be seen as a 'chip off the old block,' a piece of Earth that serves as a miniature model of the planet. Secondly, the moon in a stony fragment of Earth reminds us that the moon was once part of the Earth, ostensibly being separated in its early history in an impact collision with a Mars-size body cosmologists call Theia.
I have fond memories of finding this stone one beautiful morning on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska, with views across Cook Inlet to volcanic mountains in the Aleutian Range. Displaying it on a piece of driftwood seemed fitting, since the stone and wood are natural materials that are smoothed by waves and washed up on the beach by tides.
