Extraordinary natural stone work of art, one of a kind.

This Chinese extraordinary natural stone “painting” suggestive of an inlet bay like setting and features light and dark colors, white, cream, yellow and dark green. This is called a dream stone Shih-Hua. They are cut from historic Dali marble found in the Cangshan Mountains of western China. These mysterious mountains, unique in the world, are known for yielding incredible and fantastic natural landscaped works of art created over tens of millions of years from mineral inclusions that affected the process of ancient organic material which transformed into limestone and finally resulted in marble- a metamorphic hard stone. It is a round cut stone and is set in a circular mat- the image suggests the appearance of a planet.

This art form is centuries of years old since the Ming dynasty. Dream stones became favored art in the west particularly since the 19th century when French collectors named them Pierres de reve.

This thin marble stone is approximately 1/4″ thick and is cut from a large slab of rough material revealing incredible patterns in soft white and gray colors. Its weight is surprisingly modest- easily hung with standard hardware.

On occasion, private collectors would invite an artisan to inscribe a poetic description onto their more important dream stones and in this case the artists’ seal mark and calligraphy translation reads:

Beautiful Land of long sides of Mountains.

Dimensions:
Frame: 12 inches high and 12 inches wide.
Site: 5.5 inches diameter

Provenance: Private Chinese collection, Yunnan, China.

Reference: Dreaming of Dreamstones China’s Extraordinary Natural Stone Paintings, Schneible Fine Arts. Dreaming of Dreamstones – World’s first comprehensive English text publication covers China’s extraordinary natural Stone Paintings, by author and dream stone lecturer Douglas Schneible, 35 pages, softcover, ISBN 978-0-578. See photos.

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All of our Asian works of art come with our Lifetime Authenticity Guarantee.

Our gallery based in Newport, Rhode Island USA has been dealing in authentic Pre-Columbian, Japanese and fine Asian art, garden ornaments, lanterns and water basins for 25 years. Our president personally travels across America as well as Japan and Europe each year to meet his network partners who assist him in finding best examples. He personally inspects each antique work of art to ensure its old age, authenticity and quality condition.