Chinese Stone Picture Rock, Framed

A sun coming apart over a river delta, or possibly just minerals behaving well.

This framed picture rock is from China, of indeterminate age, a natural slab of stone with markings that read as a scene. Educated collectors in China long admired such stones, framing them as landscapes for the wall and using them as prompts for reflection, much as they did with scholar's rocks. Rings of rust and caramel swirl in the upper left, then run down in branching dark lines across a sandy, blue-tinged field. A rounded dark frame holds it. Thirty-three inches wide and twenty-one and a half high.

No two people will agree on what it shows. That seems fair.