Scholar's Rocks

Water, wind and a few million years did the carving. Chinese scholar’s rocks, or gongshi, gathered here come from Lake Tai in Jiangsu, Lingbi in Anhui, Yingde in Guangdong, and the rivers and hills of Guangxi, Yunnan, Guizhou and Hunan. For more than a thousand years Chinese scholars have set such stones on their desks as small mountains to contemplate. Taihu stone is prized for its holes and hollows, Lingbi stone for its dark color and the ring it gives when struck, Yingde stone for its wrinkled ridges.

Also here are Gobi desert rose crystals, fossil bamboo from Hunan, chicken blood stone from Zhejiang, petrified wood, Wuling, Daiwan and Hulu stones, and jade-bearing rocks from Xinjiang and Liaoning, most set on fitted hardwood or rosewood bases. Place one on a desk, a console or a low table near a window, where light can travel across its surface through the day. Nothing to assemble, nothing to plug in, and it will outlast the furniture.