Lapidarium: The Secret Lives of Stones

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As a broadcaster she can been heard (and sometimes seen) on programmes including BBC Radio 4’s Front Row and Art That Made Us. Behind the glitter of jewellers' windows lies the shadowy back-rooms of polluted water sources, conflict diamonds and the mercury poisoning of artisanal goldworkers. This book talks a lot about the history of stones, how they came to be, their presence in geological and human history, and culture. While the diversity of the stones and the geology are fascinating, what I particularly enjoyed was learning about the ways in which humans have used these stones, from the Malachite Room in Russia’s Winter Palace to the giant stone Medusa heads in the underground cisterns in Istanbul to the ‘meat stone’ that draws crowds in Taipei.

In Lapidarium , renowned art critic Hettie Judah explores the unexpected stories behind sixty stones that have shaped and inspired human history, from Dorset fossil-hunters to Chinese philosophers, Catherine the Great to Michelangelo. Upcoming books include How Not To Exclude Artist Mothers (and other parents) (Lund Humphries, September 2022) and Lapidarium (John Murray, London, October 2022/ Penguin, NY, March 2023). Following publication of her 2020 study on the impact of motherhood on artists’ careers, in 2021 she worked with a group of artists to draw up the manifesto How Not To Exclude Artist Parents, now available in 15 languages. Judah's pages are filled with eccentrics and inventors, with the obsessive pursuit of beauty, the hopeful constructions of belief and the thirst for progress and improvement. My only complaint is I wish it had more illustrations and photos of these amazing objects and natural resources.

I found myself locked out of the house with nothing to amuse myself with, no phone to play with, and a three hour wait for the next person with keys to show up.

Inspired by the lapidaries of the ancient world, Lapidarium is a collection of essays about sixty different stones that have influenced our shared history. There is a picture of each stone at the beginning of each chapter and the page edges are tinted with the colour of the respective stone. This book is a fascinating glimpse into the world of precious stones and what they have meant to people over the years. Well, not really, but that is the tone this book takes, and despite the interesting collection of rocks and minerals detailed in this book, the focus is heavily and irredeemably skewed towards art and history. Unearth the mystery of the tuff statues of Rapa Nui, the lost amber room of Frederick of Prussia and the scandal of Flint Jack.

She regularly talks about art and with artists for museum and gallery events, and has been a visiting lecturer for Goldsmiths University, London and Dauphine University, Paris. g. the daughters of Helios the sun god, and their tears of elektron or 'beaming sun', and how elektron is the root to electricity etc etc), we are offered the greek name, and then. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.