Скачать или смотреть The King of all stones, Chinese Shoushan Tianhuang 壽山石 田黃 .

I must apologize for the poor video and my grammar.

This video is about my several Tianhuang seals. I will make another video about the several small Tianhuang figures I own. Several of the stones have incredible carving.
The detail is so fine, the stone so soft. The steel carving knife is so hard, making the normal shake of the hand or pulse is enough to create defects in the carving.

Tianhuang is known as the "Emperor" or "King" of all stone. It is so rare that only an estimated 1/2-ton has ever been found since its discovery about 4.5 centuries ago during the Ming dynasty. (This has lead to an amazing variety of fakes, even during the Qing dynasty. They can be natural or dyed stone to plastic resin. Fakes are so common the stones being sold, as Tianhuang on sites like eBay, Live Auctions and others in the U.S. are almost all fakes. Yellow does not make a stone Tianhuang.)
The stone is not only rare but extremely beautiful ranging from golden yellow to green and black. No matter what color the stones always exhibit a yellow tone when lit from behind. It usually has a discolored, opaque and acidified surface of white, yellow, black or greenish called, "a skin". It can be thick, thin or partial in coverage. There can be layers of one or more colors. The color of the skin and the color of the stone will depend on where it is found along the 6 km, one car lane wide creek. It is divided into 3 main stretches the "upper, middle and lower slopes". The soils and sands along the stream range from white, reddish to black. These impart their colors into the stone.
The color itself is almost never even. This is because of the stones position and movement over time.
The color itself comes from iron oxide ions in the soil. The stone is usually white or clear to begin. It can sit in the soil for millions of years.
The formation of Tianhuang starts when a chunk of stone breaks off the ore body and rolls down hill.
It comes from several locations. As it rolls it breaks and cracks becoming rounded and crack filled. Most stones are small, under 100 grams. The largest stone ever found is just over 10 lbs.
The stone over time is change by acidic water carrying the iron oxide. This penetrates the stone via the cracks. The cracks themselves can be a deep blood red to orange-brown.
The whole process can take hundreds to millions of years.
The stone has one other main feature. It is a series of faint, whitish lines that resemble the patterns in carrots or radish when sliced open. These lines can form a complete mesh or be wispy. The best lines have splits like "Y's". There radish lines of short and spikey segments.
There is a saying" no radish, no skin and no yellow, no Tianhuang". There are some stones that may be missing one of these features but never all 3. These along with other feature like red bars, rounded, texture, etc.
The stone is sold by the gram and presently can fetch up $5,000 or 30,000RMB per gram for high quality or famous stone. In the last few years Tianhuang has reach prices of more than $4 million for a number of stones. Many of the stones have sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. This value has created an atmosphere of fakes dating back hundreds of years.
There are several other stone types which have the name Tianhuang. Many people including myself only state that Shoushan stone has the one and only.
The one other type is known as Changhua Tianhuang. It can be quite valuable too.
There is also Lumitian stone found in the higher elevation of the Shoushan mountain region. it is usually 1/10 the value and can be quite beautiful too.
So this summary shows why the stone is king. Its rarity is caused by the uncertainty of its coloration, how much stone is crushed into worthless fragments, the limited amount of parent rock and the smallness of the area around the creek. (This amounts to about several acres) This determines the amount of quality stones that remains.
These coupled with the amazing color, patterns, texture and the craftsmanship

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