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Nicedony

2.9" Money Agate Hand Carved Realistic Skull

2.9" Money Agate Hand Carved Realistic Skull

Regular price $59.46 USD
Regular price Sale price $59.46 USD
Sale Sold out
Shipping calculated at checkout.

What you are buying

  • Natural rough only
  • Never dyed or treated
  • Carved from one block
  • Cut by hand, not moulded
See how we make them

A realistic skull in money agate at 2.9 inches — small enough to close a hand around.

Sold under a trade name for the ring-shaped bands that read like stacked coins, this is banded agate whose concentric layers happen to have formed in tight, closed circles. Each cut face exposes a different depth through those rings.

The skull is the hardest test of a carver's eye, because everyone already knows what it should look like. The passages that take the longest are the ones you notice least: the transition from temple to cheekbone, and the way the teeth meet.

Item ID 5100125
Material 100% natural money agate
Size 2.9 × 1.9 × 2.2 in (75 × 50 × 57 mm)
Weight 279 g

View full details

Ships worldwide. This piece is held at our workshop and ships internationally.

  • One of a kind

    Every carving is cut from its own block of rough. The photographs on this page show the exact piece you will receive — not a sample from the same batch.

  • Natural stone, untreated

    100% natural stone, never dyed or reconstituted. Veins, inclusions and small shifts in colour are how the material formed; they are marks of origin rather than faults.

  • Carved by hand

    Cut, shaped and polished by hand. Proportions differ a little from piece to piece because each one follows the block it came out of.

  • Checked and packed

    Hand-inspected before dispatch and shipped in shockproof packaging.

The Material

Money Agate — The Stacked Coins

Banded agate whose layers happened to close into rings.

Money agate is a trade name for banded agate whose concentric layers formed in tight closed circles, reading like stacked coins on a cut face. The pattern is ordinary agate banding; what makes it saleable under this name is that the cavity happened to be round.

Each cut exposes those rings at a different depth, so the same block yields quite different faces depending on where the saw went.

Accumulation
Stacked Rings

Accumulation

The coin resemblance gives the stone its association with things that build up gradually rather than arrive at once.

Kept where money passes rather than where it sits.

Completion
Closed Circle

Completion

Concentric closed banding is traditionally read as something finished rather than open.

Set it where a long project is being ended.

What the Cut Decides
Every Face Different

What the Cut Decides

Because the rings sit at every depth, no two carvings from one block match.

Compared against its own photographs rather than against another piece.

Slow Layers
Agate Steadiness

Slow Layers

Like all agate its banding records very slow accumulation, which is the traditional reading.

Kept through work that pays off late.

Why We Carve Skulls
The Form

Why We Carve Skulls

The skull is the oldest symbol of transformation: what remains, what endures, what is left when everything temporary has gone. Carved in stone it reads less as death and more as clarity.

Turn it to face you when you want to be honest; turn it outward when you want to be left alone.

Our belief

Cut, not created

We believe a carving should carry the memory of the stone it came from. Every piece is cut from natural material, one at a time, and none of them repeat.