6.25X3.25X4.25" Oregon

I cut a chunk of banded rhyolite from the Owyhees and found a pattern that looked like a half face. Matching the faces, the rocks were ground and polished to join in the middle. Now it looks like an ogre face! The cherry wood has a fitted lid and a cedar lining.

Kemmerer is a great place to fish. Of course the fish have been dead a long time covered by volcanic ash and relegated to a grave of silt stone. There are several sites where you can pay a fee and find your own fish with a chisel and hammer. People like to mount these on easels or on walls. This slide-top box is also a great place to showcase your catch. The stone was easy to shape with a rock saw and the underside was thinned on a flap lap. The box is made of Douglas fir from a discarded pallet. A coat of clear acrylic protects the fossil from abrasion or water.

Oregon

The variety of rock from the Owyhee wilderness area is astounding. This box is made of blue-stained pine (the influence of a beetle that transfers a fungus to the wood). The rocks are country stone, hard jasper from the Rome area, and a banded rhyolite from Haystack Rock.

Nevada

Here is a rock that mirrors the scenery. This McDermitt picture stone is the lid of the box made of white pine. Looking just like a mountain scene, these hard rhyolites of the ancient caldera in northern Nevada polish beautifully, The slide top hides how the top is removed so is a "secret" compartment!

Nevada

An old redwood deck and a shou sugi ban treatment makes the base of this windowed box. Cut from a long seam of agate/rhyolite from the mountains east of the Fort McDermitt Indian Reservation, this box evokes the foreboding cliff walls guarding the river where the night raptors hoot in Owl Canyon.

A long-horned wood borer devoured this piece of oak. The mill culled it for scrap and it subsequently was used to build a one-use pallet. The fitted rocks represent a variety of jaspers, agates, and rhyolites from Oregon. Because there are 12 stones, it reminds us of the 12 tribes of Israel and the stones of the high priest's ephod.

5X4.25X3.5" Colorado

One only puts old treasures in this box. The trilobite from a creek bank in Colorado forms the sliding lid on this beauty. The soft slate requires a few layers of protective coating to keep this ancient beauty as fresh as the day it was roaming the bottom of a shallow sea. The red oak box comes with nail holes from previous users.

Oregon

Most would overlook the stone on this box. It doesn't even have a name. One of my rock hounding friends calls it "country stone ?as it may appear common place and overlooked as just a rock. When it is cut and polished, however, it shows wonderful character of a volcanic flow and tumult of the gas and heat that formed the rock. The wood was also overlooked. A discarded, broken pallet had one one small piece of red oak remaining.

Oregon

A rare find of green rhyolite shattered when cut. Preserving all the pieces meant creating a box to feature this stone as one would making a stained glass window. The walnut fitted top was rescued out of an old piece of furniture headed for the land fill.

Oregon

Sometimes when you pick up a rock you have very little idea what it looks like when cut and polished. Such is the case of this red and green and blue jasper. A simple fitted top highlights this rock from the outback of the Owyhees in southeast Oregon.

There is a famous spot in southeast Oregon called Graveyard Point. So many people have dug there that it looks like it has been shelled with mortars. The material is lacy quartz seams and agates that are often druzy in nature. This simple box features a slab of Graveyard Point quartz atop a redwood base.

3.35X2.75X3.5" Nevada

The McDermitt, Nevada caldera was once home to a forest, lakes, and the animals and plants. The box at left is a deep green agate with a silica core. It is an example of petrified algae. The green fitted lid is complimented by the green popular wood from a rescued pallet.

The second box below is smaller and has a small crystalline geode at the front left corner.

4.25X3X2.5" Oregon

High atop the Elkhorn Mountains out of Sumpter, Oregon is a region of limestone/marble that has been mined for over 100 years. Some of the material has spider web-like veins. These two small poplar slide top boxes have a smooth surface that is cool to the touch.

This oaken slide box has a lid of jade-like metamorphosed rock. My rockhound friends debate about what it is, so we affectionately call it Poor Man's Jade. It is fabulous. The rock is polished on both surfaces and slides out of the box completely.

8.25X2.5X3" Oregon

Three separate pieces of rhyolite make up the top of this red oak slide box. All origined from the Owyhee wilderness outside Vale, these rocks are chaotic, complex and rich in detail. Long enough for pencils, this oak box is polished on every surface.

3.25X3.25X3" Oregon

Very hard jasper from the remote hills between Rome, Oregon and the Owyhee River is found in massive nodules. The colors are unusual and the inclusions are interesting and chaotic. These little two little boxes made of repurposed scrap wood melding two hard substances into a durable compartment. The first is a simple solid top on oak laminated scrap. The second is a slide box made of on blue pine.

4.75X3.5X2.5" Oregon

This stone looks like a view of the forest, mountains, river valleys and lakes from 30,000 feet. It has exquisite detail of reds, greeds, blues and browns that mimics an earth map. The slide box is simple pine so as not to take away from the focal point of this wonderful rock.

The worms crawled in and out of this beautiful piece of oak wood. Atop, the Stinkwater petrified oak is testament to the persistent nature of this tree and how little time has changed a successful formula of life.