In early July, Polly Hutchison from the Natural History Museum spent an afternoon at Drawing Matter examining a number of specimens from John Ruskin’s collection of siliceous minerals. In this short film, Polly explains the geological processes by which they were made and some of the resulting characteristics that likely attracted Ruskin to them.
Ruskin originally composed the collection for the students of St David’s School in Reigate and gave it to the school in 1883 along with a printed catalogue. The majority of the collection remains intact and Ruskin’s own descriptions of the minerals discussed by Polly are reproduced below. To see the rest of the collection, click here.
11 — Jasperine agate, in developed brecciation.27 — Icelandic chalcedony, passing into quartz, which traverses a level lake, in the hollow of the interior, and crystallizes, not in the usual form of quartz, but in triangular pyramids. This, like No. 26, is an extremely rare specimen.56 — Red and yellow jasper variously coiled and squeezed, with veins of imperfect quartz, —a rare kind, which the traveller who gave it me told me he had ridden three days in a savage country to get. As I don’t care about savage countries, nor whether a jasper, which one must ride three days to get a bit of (and can’t make anything of when one has got it) is to be found in New Guinea or Old Guinea (this is, I believe, from New), I have no reluctance in parting with this specimen: but I believe it could not be easily matched. 58 — Our three last examples of the jasperine group sum its peculiarities, and exhibit them in the finest materials. This specimen, jasperine agate, with central quartz, is beautifully parallel and fine in the agatescent bands, which, please notice in passing, are also remarkable for the bastion-like points of their angles, to which the term ‘fortification,’ as descriptive of agate, is properly limited. These angles are, in this example, only the re-entering ones of large arches but we shall see them in others, formed by straight crystalline planes. The flammeate, jasperine, red and grey stains—the latter especially, where they cross the white band, on the broadest polished side—are of precision and beauty certainly in their kind, not to be surpassed, and in my own collection unrivalled.80 — Perfect quartz crystal of Dauphiné, as good as well can be, and in the inside of it, fit for spectacles or telescopes or what not. Of course a little spoiled at the point in the manner above described, but I have not above four bits in my whole collection that are better, and can’t spare any of them.81 — White quartz coated with amethystine quartz. This example begins a short series of twelve specimens, representing the conditions of silica, which permit its employment in jeweller’s or engraver’s work. The principal of these, both for its frequency of occurrence and ancient classic reputation, is the amethyst; it is also extremely beautiful, and stands alone as a purple gem; for although between the sapphire and the ruby there are gradations of violet colour of extreme loveliness, these stones of intermediate tint are never dark; you may find a dark red ruby, or a dark blue sapphire, but never a dark purple intermediate stone. The amethyst, on the contrary, is characteristically dark purple, and when coloured uniformly, of extreme beauty. In material it is only quartz, coloured by—the mineralogists—don’t exactly know what, but it is so far specifically different from common quartz that when the two, which frequently happens are found together, the white quartz is always inside, and the amethyst outside. I have seen exceptional cases, but they are very rare. In this example the purple colour only develops itself at the extremities of the crystals: it does so, however, whether they are directed up or down!95 — One of several large specimens, which complete the collection to the number of a hundred, [and] are examples of the larger and grander forms assumed by siliceous minerals, [which] all exhibit structural phenomena too complex for description.
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– Karen Eve Johnson, Nicholas Olsberg and John Ruskin