Flower Fairies™ Black Agate 20 x 15mm Oval "Christmas Tree Fairy" Cameo

This oval cameo features a beautifully detailed image of artist Mary Cicely Barker's "Christmas Tree Fairy" ultrasonically carved into high-quality black agate. The petite fairy rests atop the pine bough of a Christmas tree decked with candles and a beaded garland. With a star-tipped wand in her hand, the Christmas Tree Fairy is said to glide silently from branch to branch on Christmas night as children sleep. An English illustrator, Cicely Mary Barker, introduced her first Flower Fairies™ in a 1923 publication titled Flower Fairies of the Spring and continued to create these lovely creatures through 1948. By special copyright permission from the artist's estate, some of her Flower Fairies have been reproduced in cameos that are ultrasonically carved, beautifully detailed, and ready for mounting. Over the years, Barker showcased 170 precisely rendered watercolor illustrations of plants and flowers, each coupled with an endearing fairy whose likeness is based on a real child of her acquaintance. In her books, Barker paired each illustration with a poem or verse dedicated to that fairy. According to the stories, Flower Fairies are part of the natural world, born whenever seeds sprout. Each one lives within their chosen flower, plant or tree, caring for her chosen home and helping it grow and thrive. Cameo-quality banded agate is selectively mined to produce cameo carvings and dyed to smooth and deepen the dark color. Smooth, even white banding gives the carver (or ultrasonic carving equipment) plenty of design material to work with in capturing the finest details and contours in these designs. The black color of the agate provides a dark, contrasting background that highlights these details.

• Gemstone Type: Agate
• Stone Shape: Oval
• Stone Size: 20 x 15mm
• Stone Type: Natural
• Color: Black
• Enhancement: Dyed (D)
• Mohs Hardness: 7
• Refractive Index: 1.53–1.54
• Specific Gravity: 2.58–2.64
• Weight: 0.000 kg