This Chinese extraordinary round natural stone painting of a mountain range in clouds 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.

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 painting is approximately 1/4″ thick and is cut from a large slab of rough material revealing incredible natural patterns in soft white and dark green 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:

“Early Spring in Yun Mountain”

Dimensions:
Frame: Our arts and crafts design 15.75″ high and 15.75″ wide.
Site: 11.5″ diameter

Provenance: Private Chinese collection, Yunnan, China.