::JASPER::

JASPER

HEALING PROPERTIES:
Jasper is a wonderful supporting stone. Wear it to gain a positive outlook. Attracts what one needs (not wants). Good for those needing more organizational abilities. Mood elevator, invigorating, stabilizing and helps overcome depression. Improves the sense of smell and soothes the nerves. Useful in overcoming disorders of blood, digestion, stomach, biliousness and bladder trouble.

PHYSICAL CHEMICAL PROPERTIES:

Jasper exhibits various colors, but chiefly brick red to brownish red. It owes its color to admixed hematite, but when it occurs with clay admixed, the color is a yellowish white or gray, or with goethite, a brown or yellow. Often jasper is found multi-colored. Chemically SiO₂ , Jasper is opaque, fine-grained or dense variety of the silica mineral chert. Jasper, long used for jewelry and ornamentation, has a dull lustre but takes a fine polish. Its hardness and other physical properties are those of quartz.

Jasper

Chemical Formula

SiO₂

Hardness

7.00

Specific Gravity

2.61

Refractive Index

1.53 - 1.54

ORIGIN HISTORY:
The name jasper is derived from the Greek word iaspis. In ancient writings the term jasper was chiefly applied to translucent and brightly colored stones, particularly chalcedony, but also was applied to the opaque jasper.
Jasper was known as the great "rain-bringer" in the fourth century. For thousands of years, black jasper was used to test gold-silver alloys for their gold content. Rubbing the alloys on the stone, called a touchstone, produces a streak the color of which determines the gold content within one part in one hundred. Jasper is one of the gemstones, that used in commesso, also called florentine mosaic. Commesso is a technique of fashioning pictures with thin, cut-to-shape pieces of brightly colored, semiprecious stones, developed in Florence in the late 16th century. The stones most commonly used are agates, quartzes, chalcedonies, jaspers, granites, porphyries, petrified woods, and lapis lazuli. Commesso pictures, used mainly for tabletops and small wall panels, range from emblematic and floral subjects to landscapes.

GEOGRAPHICAL DEPOSITS: