Lessons in Lapidary from the Limestone School

By Christian Miles
Grade 9
Limestone Community School

    A lapidary is an artisan who works with stone, minerals, or gemstones into decorative or functional objects. Lapidary comes from the word lapidaries, which were medieval “treatises.”     Theophilus Presbyter was a Benedictine monk during c1070 to 1125. He had a great fascination for applied arts. A fine powder, like sandpaper, which was like “fragments of crystals” or “emery” was used to polish “onyx, beryl, emerald, jasper” and many other stones.
    Also used was a “dop stick”, this was used by attaching the gemstones to a long piece of wood, which was the same thickness and then was rubbed on the stone on a wet piece of hard sandstone and then used different grits till the rock became completely clear and shiny.
    Man used to take rocks and hit it on each other to break them. They would scratch and chisel out symbols and writings on hard rocks and cave walls. As they cracked more rocks they found that there were different kinds of rocks, some were harder then others and they could be used to scratch on less harder rocks.
    As far back as 1,000,000 years ago, they used drilling and bruting. Drilling was one of the first lapidary arts. They would break or fracture the rocks to use pieces for what they needed to make the stone they wanted.
    Bruting was the way they shaped the gem which was rubbed against another harder mineral rock. They used this invention for many centuries  until something else was invented.

    Faceting is the grinding plate called a lap and a set of protractors that help the faceter hold the stone accurately against the lap. He controls the actual process while grinding and polishing each face of the stone.

    Stones can be found in rivers, streams and other places were water moves. This is done when the water and stones are rubbed against the sand or dirt in the river bed. Some stone do not become as smooth as using a tumbler, but this is how the process started.
    Old Tools are also used for Lapidary
    Lapidary is proven to be done way before Christ. These methods or challenges were used such as sawing, chipping, drilling, polishing and faceting. Most of these methods are still used today. Jade was used and also jade look-a-likes.

    There are many jobs that you can do in Lapidary. There are part-time, full-time and self-employed jobs in this career.