Liberty Tshuma an artist managed and working with AVAC Arts has some blocks of petrified wood which is a rare collection he currently have on sell. This form of a stone he collects from Gokwe and Dande area of Mbire in Zimbabwe, areas regularized by the nation’s board of Parks, Forests and Wildlife.
Petrified wood (from the Greek root petro meaning “rock” or “stone”; literally “wood turned into stone”) is the name given to a special type of fossilized remains of terrestrial vegetation which in his instance its mupani and black ebon trees.
It forms when plant material is buried by sediment and protected from decay by oxygen and organisms. Then, groundwater rich in dissolved solids flows through the sediment replacing the original plant material with silica, calcite, pyrite or another inorganic material such as opal.
Liberty often use this petrified wood to make lapidary work; when he cut it into shapes for making jewelry, sawn into blocks to make bookends, sawn into thick slabs to make table tops, and sawn into thin slabs for clock faces, cut into cabochons, used to make tumbled stones and many other crafts.
AVAC Arts.
