Malachite and March EBW challenge

Malachite is one of my most favorite gems. I found out about its existance when I was five, when my grandma and grandpa were reading Pavel Bazhov's Fairy Tales to me.

Recently, I browsed e-bay in search for some malachite beads... PEOPLE, I wanted to SCREAM!!! Most of those "genuine natural malachite","rare beauty", "we guarantee that our stones are 100% natural", "limited quantity available" etc, etc, etc - ARE MAN-CREATED! Assembled, pressed and stabilized from malachite dust in the very best case, and glossy plastic multi-colored monsters in the very worst. By understandable reasons, I will not paste any pictures here. But I can barely hold myself... Very, very upsetting indeed.

Wanna see a real malachite? Here it comes:

I used this lovely cab in my latest piece, made for the EBW March Challenge, "Fairy Tale".

It is called Хозяйка Медной Горы, or Lady Of The Copper Mine. To cut a long story short, the Lady was mighty but slightly arrogant, cold but extremely beautiful. She fell in love with a young miner and (among other things) asked him to make her a vase, shaped as a stone flower. The poor guy was a perfectionist and after several trials has delivered a stone flower that was as good as alive. There are lots of gems, copper and malachite in that fairy tale!

The shape of the pendant is a crescent, and this is my interpretation of a traditional female protective amulet that was common in Russia (and not only!).

Actually, I was amazed to find out that Swedish miners also have stories about Lady of The Mine. And their stories are quite similar to what I heard as a child. How very interesting...

Oah well, you know what you will have to do somewhere between the 9th and 15th of March: go to our blog and vote for your favorites! Otherwise, you can always search for the "ebwc" tag on Etsy!

Be well! :)
And please, if somebody is trying to tell you that there is such a thing as "red", "purple", "multicolor" or "rainbow" malachite - please do not believe those people... Or at least do not pay more than a buck or two...