In the Home
Where it belongs
This is an object to live beside slowly — an upright slab on a console or a broad shelf, catching raking light that brings its fossils into relief.
Formation
How it came to be
It forms on the beds of warm, shallow seas, where the shells and skeletons of marine life accumulate and compact into stone over millions of years.
Limestone is made largely of calcium carbonate, much of it biological in origin — the compressed remains of shelled sea creatures.
The fossil beds of Morocco preserve ammonites, orthoceras, and other marine life from the Devonian and later periods, hundreds of millions of years old.
Each fossil marks a single life; the slab as a whole records an entire vanished sea floor.
The Object
We select vertical slabs where the fossils are well defined and legible, partially polished so the shells lift out of the surrounding matrix.
Closer In
Closer in, the chambered interiors of the ammonites resolve into fine spirals — the growth record of a single animal, sealed in stone.
You may also notice
From the Journal