This piece has a great beauty to it. I named it “Black and White Crystals”,as you see, when the light skims across it, it looks like crystals moving. This is a Victoria stone. This stone is manmade and is a collector’s stone. I’ve listed the story of Victoria below. This is a freeform stone that is hand cut by me and then wrapped in beautiful Argentium Sterling Silver wire. It is approximately 2¼” from the top of the bail to the bottom of pendant and is about 1” at its widest point. It is approximately 35 carats in weight.

The Victoria stone, also called Iimori stone, is a man-made stone created by Dr. Imori from Japan. Late in the 60's Iimori Laboratory Ltd. of Tokyo Japan began to market a variety of imitation gem materials. The chatoyant Victoria stone in 16 different colors. This material was advertised to be a melt of various natural minerals that had reconstructed into a new mineral and cooled for months under 2000 pounds pressure. The melt mass then partially devitrified forming chatoyant fan-like sprays of crystal fibers. To protect his market, the 84-year-old Dr. Iimori did not patent his process, instead preferring to keep it a secret even from his family. With no new production since the 80s, it is now a collector’s stone.

Argentium® Sterling Silver is a patented and trademarked alloy that is at least 92.5% pure silver, just like traditional sterling silver. What makes it different from traditional sterling silver is that a small amount of germanium replaces some of the copper that is usually the other 7.5% of sterling silver. Peter Johns, a professor of silversmithing at Middlesex University in England, invented Argentium® Sterling Silver in 1996.

Argentium® Sterling Silver is highly tarnish-resistant and does not firescale.