The Weight of Stone

The Weight of Stone

We reach for them instinctively. They become talismans – carriers of time, markers of moments. This is a study in material memory – an archive not of rarity or brilliance but of feeling. Each mineral chosen for its form, its texture, its quiet pull. Kept not to be displayed but to be held. We invite you to take a slower gaze. A pause before polish. A moment to see these materials as they first arrived – uncut, unrefined, alive with complexity.

Some seem almost celestial; others, like fragments of the body.

Together, they hold the energy of the land – the age of the Earth.

A time before human hands intervened.

Cornwall holds more varieties of minerals than anywhere else in Britain – a fact shaped by its restless geology.

This land has been mined for over 4,000 years, drawn open for copper, tin and china clay.

Stones that helped shape civilisation: grounding technologies, pigments, medicines and myth.

For centuries, rocks and minerals have spoken in many languages – practical, symbolic, spiritual. Marble, soft to carve yet hardening with age.

Lapis, deep and celestial, long associated with the divine. Each one holds meaning. Each one tells a story before it’s shaped.

To hold a stone is to hold something older than language – a gesture of return.

To the ground, to time, to silence.

Before the story, there was stone.


Words by Rebecca de Havas

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