How to recognize Ivory?

There are many items on the Market today being represented and sold as ivory that are actually bone or plastic.

That is why we collected a several methods to help you recognize if the item is ivory or a fake:

* The piece weight: Ivory feels heavy and dense when you hold it in your hand. If the item feels lightweight it's either bone or ivory. 
  Bone can have the exact same weight as ivory. Compare the weight to similar items that you know to be ivory.

* Feel the item texture: Ivory is lustrous and has a smooth surface. If the surface of the piece feels rutted and pockmarked, it might not be ivory.
  Moreover, if you see spots or other odd markings, though, it probably isn't ivory.

* Synthetic ivory: Use a magnifying glass and look for air bubble indentations or small craters that appear from being poured in a mold.
   Synthetic Ivory will have grain lines in one direction, but when looking at the opposite angle, you will not see any lines;
   the ends of the lines on a synthetic piece will make a speckled pattern. This surface is usually the bottom of the piece. 

* Ivory does not have pits or multiple darkened spots, unlike bone.

* The hot pin test: Plastic object dents whenever a very hot object touches its surface. 
   To test for this, find a pin and heat its tip until it is very hot. then touch it to the surface of the material. The results will show you if it is ivory or plastic.

* Plastic contains a single line that sticks out and goes around the material until it meets. This comes from the mold that holds the plastic together.

* Bones: Unlike teeth and tusks, bones have tiny canals that run through them to carry nutrients and house nerves and other organic material.

* Bottom of a piece: Since many collectors and dealers look first at the bottom of a piece, genuine ivory will only have the signature of the artist since the grain confirms the pieces authenticity and value.

* Getting the Item Tested by a Professional: To leave absolutely no question about your item, take it to a forensics lab and have it chemically tested by a scientist.
  The cellular structure of ivory is different from that of bone, but lab equipment is required to determine which is which with finality.

How to take care of Ivory?

Fossil ivory or mammoth ivory is sensitive to surrounding temperature and harsh climatic conditions have an adverse impact. Due to its sensitivity to humidity and temperature, when it expands and contracts, it can split due to stress. We ensure that only the purest of ivory is used that is free of any imperfection after being acclimatized for a number of years above ground. To protect your ivory, it is recommended that you rub mineral oil twice a year to replenish its natural oils. Renaissance Wax can be used to give it a protective polished shine.

However, please bear in mind and do not:

• Spill or put ink on ivory
• Make the ivory wet
• Put the ivory in direct sunlight
• Let the ivory heat up or freeze
• Expose the ivory to fluctuations in temperature and humidity

Snuff bottles

The Chinese began to use snuff bottles to hold powdered tobacco during the Qing Dynasty (1644 – 1912).

Although smoking tobacco was made illegal during that time, snuff was allowed because it was considered a remedy for common illnesses like colds, headaches and stomach disorders.It was carried in a small bottle, like other medicines. It is comparable to the snuff box used in Europe.

Tobacco was introduced to the court at Beijing sometime during the mid to late-16th century. After the Qing Dynasty made smoking tobacco illegal, the use of snuff and snuff bottles spread through the upper class, and by the end of the 17th century, the use of snuff was a social ritual. Eventually, the trend spread to the rest of the country and into every social class. It was common to offer a pinch of snuff as a greeting for friends and relatives. Snuff bottles soon became an object of beauty and a way to represent status— the rarer and finer the snuff bottle, the higher the owner’s status. Snuff bottle manufacturing hit its peak during the 18th century.

The use of snuff died out soon after the establishment of the Republic of China. However, replica snuff bottles are still made, and can be purchased in souvenir shops, flea markets and museum gift shops. Original snuff bottles from the Qing period are highly desirable for both serious collectors and museums. A good bottle is not only exquisitely beautiful but should have a wonderful tactile quality. After all, snuff bottles were made to be held. The most fascinating snuff bottles are those with paintings on the inside of them.

What Are Crystals?

A crystal is a hard, solid substance made of molecules that bond together in specific patterns to form an interesting shape that has straight edges and flat surfaces. Not all crystals have the same shape, there are actually lots of different kinds of crystals, and each kind has its own special shape. Beautiful crystals are used for jewelry, like diamonds or emeralds. Crystals are often transparent, which means that you can see through them sort of like you can see through glass. Other kinds have beautiful colors.

What a crystal is made of actually depends on what kind of crystal it is - for example, salt and snowflakes are actually formed out of different kinds of crystals. Snowflakes are made from crystals formed by frozen water. Salt crystals are formed by some chemical elements which join together in a crystal shape. Crystals can be formed in several different ways. Most crystals are formed through evaporation. Some types of crystals are formed from melted rock in the earth: When the hot rock cools gradually, it will sometimes form crystals. Geodes are round rocks that are formed when bubbles are trapped in the melted rock. As the bubbles cool down, crystals grow inside of the bubble of rock.

As a crystal grows, the pattern that makes it a certain shape will be repeated over and over, so the crystal will always keep the same shape as it gets bigger. The chemical elements that a crystal is made of are what tell the crystal what shape it will be. A lot of crystals might seem to look alike, but what elements the crystal is made out of will make it a unique shape and color. Even the same element can make different crystals, based on conditions such as temperature and light and what other elements are around. 

Modern Glassblowing

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Crystal Structure

The scientific definition of a "crystal" is based on the microscopic arrangement of atoms inside it, called the crystal structure. A crystal is a solid where the atoms form a periodic arrangement.

Not all solids are crystals. For example, when liquid water starts freezing, the phase change begins with small ice crystals that grow until they fuse, forming a polycrystalline structure. In the final block of ice, each of the small crystals (called "crystallites" or "grains") is a true crystal with a periodic arrangement of atoms, but the whole polycrystal does not have a periodic arrangement of atoms, because the periodic pattern is broken at the grain boundaries. Most macroscopic inorganic solids are polycrystalline, including almost all metals, ceramics, ice, rocks, etc. Solids that are neither crystalline nor polycrystalline, such as glass, are called amorphous solids, also called glassy, vitreous, or noncrystalline. These have no periodic order, even microscopically. There are distinct differences between crystalline solids and amorphous solids: most notably, the process of forming a glass does not release the latent heat of fusion, but forming a crystal does.

A crystal structure (an arrangement of atoms in a crystal) is characterized by its unit cell, a small imaginary box containing one or more atoms in a specific spatial arrangement. The unit cells are stacked in three-dimensional space to form the crystal.

The symmetry of a crystal is constrained by the requirement that the unit cells stack perfectly with no gaps. There are 219 possible crystal symmetries, called crystallographic space groups. These are grouped into 7 crystal systems, such as cubic crystal system (where the crystals may form cubes or rectangular boxes, such as halite shown at right) or hexagonal crystal system (where the crystals may form hexagons, such as ordinary water ice).

The Chinese Zodiac

Chinese zodiac is a scheme, and a systematic plan of future action, that is based on the year which in a person born.
Each year is represented by an animal in a 12-year cycle. 

The animal's cycle:
1. Rat. 2. Ox. 3. Tiger. 4. Rabbit. 5. Dragon. 6. Snake. 7. Horse. 8. Goat 9. Monkey. 10. Rooster. 11. Dog. 12. Pig.

After 12 years the cycle begins from the start (the first year that is represented by the rat), and repeats itself. 
The belief in the Chinese Zodiac remains popular in several East Asian countries, such as China, Vietnam, Korea, Taiwan and Japan.

Identifying this scheme using the term "zodiac" reflects time cycles divided into 12 parts, 
and is widely associated with a culture of attributing influence of a person's relationship to the cycle upon their personality and/or events in their life. 
The greatest difference from western astrology is that the animals of the Chinese zodiac are not associated with constellations.

In Chinese astrology the animal signs assigned by year represent what others perceive you as being or how you present yourself. 
Did you know? 
The Chinese Zodiac animals assigned by year are not the only signs. 
Actually, there are also animal signs assigned by month (called inner animals), by day (called true animals) and hours (called secret animals).