About the History and Properties of Chrysoprase and Hornstones

CHRYSOPRASE is the chief of two varieties of hornstone which are cut as ornamental stones, the other being wood-stone or silicified wood, such as is obtained from the petrified forest known as Chalcedony Park, in Arizona, and which occurs abundantly in various mountainous localities in the western United States. Hornstone is an old mining term and is not used by lapidaries. It is a fine-grained, very compact, variety of quartz, of a granular consistency.

The name chrysoprase is derived from two Greek words, meaning golden leek, and describes the colour of the stone. The ancients ascribed to it the virtues of the emerald, though in a lesser degree. They believed it lost its colour when in contact with poison, and was a cordial and stimulant.

A characteristic of chrysoprase is its splintery fracture; the sharp edges of fragments verging on translucency. The approved tints of chrysoprase are leek and apple green, although the blue, golden-green, and other yellowish tints are occasionally used. The colours remain stead-fast in artificial light. The colour owes its presence to about one per cent of nickel, probably in the form of a hydrated silicate; the loss of water through heating the stone but moderately, causes it to pale gradually, until it ends in a total loss of colour. A long exposure to the direct rays of the sun will produce a like effect, but the cause will be the strong light and not the heat. The brittleness of chrysoprase presents difficulties to the lapidary; it is usually cut en cabochon, or else with a plane surface bordered with one or two courses of facets. Although its intrinsic value is less than it was formerly, chrysoprase is one of the most valuable varieties of quartz in the ornamental stone field, and is highly esteemed among the semi-precious stones.

Chrysoprase occurs in plates and veins, usually locked in serpentine, and its most ancient and common source is a district south of Breslau in the province of Silesia, Germany. According to an account published in 1805, a vein of chrysoprase three (German) miles long was discovered in 1740 by a Prussian officer. The real discovery probably long preceded this, because chrysoprase, used decoratively, has existed in the Wenzel Chapel, Prague, since the fourteenth century. The leek-green stone is found in a few other unimportant localities in Europe, also India, in the Ural Mountains, Siberia, and it occurs in various places in North America; one is at Nickel Mountain near Riddle, Douglas County, Oregon, but the most important mines are those of the Himalaya Mining Company, about eight miles from Visalia in Tulare County, California.

Frederick the Great of Prussia highly favoured and evinced a great interest in this beautiful stone; possibly this was to some extent because it originated in Silesia, which became his conquered territory in 1745, after his second Silesian war. Frederick had two famous tables made of chrysoprase, and had it utilised in mosaics. Basking in the sunlight of royal favour, chrysoprase grew in popularity, which its native merits have always, to a considerable degree, sustained.

A charming Roumanian legend ascribes the discovery of chrysoprase in the rocky bed of the Riul Doamnei, a beautiful stream, to a Princess Trina, who, to succour her people in time of dire famine, stripped herself of all her possessions but a pitiful last piece of jewelry, a golden lizard with green eyes of chrysoprase, given to the princess on her wedding day by her deceased mother. A wizard admonished the princess never to part with the lizard, because it would some day bring untold riches, and besides that, whoever possessed any leek-green chrysoprase would, in time of great distress, understand the language of animals. Reduced to the verge of selling her last treasure by the unbearable sight of the sufferings of the children of her starving people, the good Princess Trina was weeping and praying at a window, when a tiny lizard with glittering green eyes darted into the room, and, in a silver voice and lacertilian language, which the princess by virtue of her talisman understood perfectly, said: "Help shall arise for thee out of a river: Only seek."

Thus admonished the princess wandered through the stony bed of one river after another wearing out her eyes, her strength, and her soul, in the search; until, when about to succumb to exhaustion, she discovered a vast treasure of chrysoprase, thus ending the famine and inaugurating an unprecedented reign of prosperity for her beloved people.