Busacca Gallery

Antique pink alabaster beautifully hand made vessel vase This beautiful stone alabaster version of a jar could have provided food supplies. The vase is decorated with wonderful pink and black stone alabaster. Stone-working reached extraordinary levels of sophistication. Artisans carved the stone so that natural veins in the rock followed the shape of the finished product. These great artisans worked, shaped and polish alabaster, marble and stone objects threw out Europe, for thousands of years.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabaster

Alabaster (sometimes called satin spar) is a name applied to varieties of two distinct minerals: gypsum (a hydrous sulfate of calcium) and calcite (a carbonate of calcium). The former is the alabaster of the present day; the latter is generally the alabaster of the ancients. The two kinds are readily distinguished from each other by their relative hardnesses. The gypsum kind is so soft as to be readily scratched by a finger-nail while the calcite kind is too hard to be scratched in this way, though it does yield readily to a knife. Alabaster, In the 15th century it's carving into icons and altarpieces was a valuable local industry throe out Europe. The finer kinds of alabaster are largely employed as an ornamental stone, especially for ecclesiastical decoration and for the rails of staircases and halls. Its softness enables it to be readily carved into elaborate forms, but its solubility in water renders it inapplicable to outdoor work. The purest alabaster is a snow-white material of fine tiniforni grain.