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Product Description
Marble Stone Sphere Decorator Rock
This lovely Marble hand-carved stone sphere is 2.5 inches in diameter.
Marble is a metamorphic material and is found all over the world in many different colors and patterns. The colors are due to impurities present when the rock was changing -clay, sand, iron oxide, etc.
California has the most abundant marble in the U.S. This cream colored marble with white spots is from Haystack Mountain in Inyo County.
This Marble sphere is from the Kirkby collection and it was self-collected and hand cut by them sometime in the 1930's to the 1960's.
Sam and Ruby Kirkby married in 1936. They moved to California, where they started Kirkby Trailer Company and they spent many years traveling throughout the west and self-collecting Petrified Wood, thundereggs, agates, jaspers and other rocks. Many of these areas are now in closed off areas and no longer collectable! The Kirkby's were famous for the sphere making-including, at the time, the largest sphere ever cut!
They sold the trailer company in the 1950’s and founded the Jurupa Mountains Discovery Center in 1964. A center that supported education in rocks, minerals, fossils, and petrified wood. They retired and moved to Scottsdale, Arizona in 2002. Ruth was a paleobotanist and had several rare plant fossils named after her. She also authored articles for Rocks & Gems magazine.
