Blue Alabaster

[rlmulchin]

I am trying to find a source for blue or translucent blue alabaster for a sculpting project I want to do, can you help?

Rick Mulchin
Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.A.

rickmu@comcast.net

[Blacksun]

Have you seen such a creature? I've been around the block a few times within the carvable stones and have not yet run into a blue or translucent blue alabaster....but would LOVE to find some if it exists..... Anybody?

[G. Murdoch]

Greetings,

I have not seen nor heard of such a thing myself, would love to get my hands on some. I am currently working on a piece of ice blue marble which I got from neolithic stone. It is crystalline (rather than fine grained) marble, and quite hard. I'm still in the roughing out phase, will post photos when finished. The stone will be gorgeous, the sculpture will be....hopefully worthy of the stone.

Graham

[G. Murdoch]

Greetings,

Just finished reading a response from Randy at neolithic stone. He's never heard of such a thing, although he did mention that some people will call blue anhydrite (angelite) alabaster, and get away with.

Graham

[Landseer]

I remember some of the finer grade carved architectural stones in NYC were made of stone I heard called "Hudson River Bluestone" and it was just a nice fine grained very pale green-blue color.

I had five pieces I can remember, that have photos, most had been painted over but you can see some of the color in these two after the paint had largely peeled off over the decades;
http://www.lostnewyorkcity.com/sculpturephotos/Plate-52-s.html
http://www.lostnewyorkcity.com/sculpturephotos/Plate-51-s.html

Some of the color on the foreground edge where there is a chip;
http://www.lostnewyorkcity.com/sculpturephotos/Plate-64-s.html

Lesser viewability, more paint and dirt;
http://www.lostnewyorkcity.com/sculpturephotos/Plate-41-s.html
http://www.lostnewyorkcity.com/sculpturephotos/Plate-65-s.html

As I remember it was more greenish than blue but depended on what light you looked at it and the individual stone. It was fairly soft as I remember but seemed to have very fine grain particles and was almost like marble or plaster in that regard, not sandy, or chunky like granite.
It seemed to be a sedimentary rock that had layers deposited like brown sandstone or limestone.

[beetlem]

Hi,
I've recently bought some blue alabaster from GreatArt at http://www.greatart.co.uk/BLUEALABASTER-new-sculpture.htm

It's a lovely material to work in as once you polish it it starts to look like layers of water running through the rock :) Though when I've tried to look it up there seems to be some debate about whether it really exists - like people dye normal alabaster blue... Most odd!

Hope that helps
Alex

[john66]

This just in from one of my suppliers, Myles from www.2sculpt.com just sent me an info card and im sure he said the found some blue alabaster high up in the mountains of South America...13000ft to be exact. check his site and give him a call he has over a million pounds of stone at his place, he is in Lawrence Kansas. I met Myles at the symposium in Colorado a few years ago great guy to deal with. I saw a picture of the stone on a info card he sent me and it looks pretty nice, hope this helps you out.

[NMONYX]

Well I do not sell blue but I have about 7 other colors of Alabaster I mine myself and sell.
I was told by on older stone carver that after he would finish a carving he would dye it to get it the color he wanted. I dont know how he did it but seems like cheating to me. I once bought a large 4 pound chunk of turquoise. It looked great. Well after telling some friends where I got it they had me cut it open. The inner inches were white. It was dyed Howelite not Turquoise. Just for fun I may soak a block of white Alabaster in a 5 gallon pail of blue dye and see how far the dye soaks in, how long it takes and if when cut and polished it holds a shine.

Jason
http://www.newmexicoalabaster.net