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Nicedony

4.5" Yooperlite Hand Carved Realistic Skull

4.5" Yooperlite Hand Carved Realistic Skull

Regular price $118.15 USD
Regular price Sale price $118.15 USD
Sale Sold out
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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 cut from a single block of yooperlite, 4.5 inches, 1004 g.

Yooperlite is a syenite carrying veins of fluorescent sodalite. In daylight it reads as ordinary grey speckled rock; under a UV light those veins glow a hot orange that maps out the internal structure of the stone.

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 5100147
Material 100% natural yooperlite
Size 4.5 × 2.8 × 3.4 in (110 × 72 × 87 mm)
Weight 1004 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

Yooperlite — The Hidden Fire

Grey rock in daylight; under ultraviolet light the veins run orange.

Yooperlite is the newest stone in this shop by a wide margin. It was identified in 2017 by Erik Rintamaki along the Lake Superior shoreline in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and named after the Yoopers — what people from that peninsula call themselves. Geologists confirmed it as syenite carrying veins of fluorescent sodalite.

In daylight it reads as unremarkable speckled grey stone. Under a UV torch the sodalite veins glow a hot orange that maps the internal structure. Almost nothing else about a carving changes so completely with the light you point at it.

What Is Not Apparent
Under the Light

What Is Not Apparent

The stone is inevitably associated with what goes unnoticed in ordinary conditions, and is kept by people who like that idea more than they like the rock.

Keep a small UV torch beside it; the piece is half of the object.

Where It Comes From
Northern Stone

Where It Comes From

Found on one shoreline in one part of the world, yooperlite carries a specificity most stones do not — it is from somewhere in particular.

Traditionally kept as a marker of a place rather than a property.

New Things Still Exist
Late Discovery

New Things Still Exist

Identified in 2017, it is a reminder that the catalogue of ordinary things is not closed.

Show it to someone who thinks everything has already been found.

The Same Object, Twice
Two States

The Same Object, Twice

Practitioners tend to describe it in terms of the same thing being two things depending on how it is looked at.

Turn the light on and off rather than leaving either state permanent.

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.