Marble Sculpture - Material Origin and Qualities

Material Origin and Qualities

Marble is a metamorphic rock derived from limestone, composed mostly of calcite (a crystalline form of calcium carbonate, CaCO3). The original source of the parent limestone is the seabed deposition calcium carbonate in the form of microscopic animal skeletons or similar materials. Marble is formed when the limestone is transformed by heat and pressure after being overlain by other materials. The finest marbles for sculpture have no or few stains (some natural stain can be seen in the sculpture shown at left, which the sculptor has skillfully incorporated into the sculpture).

Read more about this topic:  Marble Sculpture

Famous quotes containing the words material, origin and/or qualities:

    ‘Pure experience’ is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.
    William James (1842–1910)

    Someone had literally run to earth
    In an old cellar hole in a byroad
    The origin of all the family there.
    Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe
    That now not all the houses left in town
    Made shift to shelter them without the help
    Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard.
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    A poem is like a person. Though it has a family tree, it is important not because of its ancestors but because of its individuality. The poem, like any human being, is something more than its most complete analysis. Like any human being, it gives a sense of unified individuality which no summary of its qualities can reproduce; and at the same time a sense of variety which is beyond satisfactory final analysis.
    Donald Stauffer (b. 1930)