Description
Mexican crazy lace agate butterfly wings, carved and polished, set on a slim gold toned metal stand worked into a butterfly body with fine curled antennae. The wingspan measures 15cm across the pair.
Crazy lace agate is a banded chalcedony, and the banding is the whole point of the stone. Cut a slab from a different part of the same nodule and you get a completely different picture, which is why no two of these carvings look alike.
What you can see in the Mexican crazy lace agate butterfly wings
The colour is deep and warm rather than bright. Oxblood red runs through the body of each wing with near black mottled sections gathered toward the wing base, and the outer edges break into white and cream lace banding that swirls back on itself in tight loops.
There are tan and honey coloured patches through the right wing where the banding shifts, and thin white threads run across both wings like fine veining.
The two wings are a matched pair but not identical, which is normal for a carve taken from a banded stone. Look at the images rather than the description for the pattern, because that is the part no wording gets right.
About the name
Mexican crazy lace agate is the trade name for this banded material rather than a mineral species. The lace banding is what earns the crazy part, and the Mexican part points to where the material is usually quarried, though the Grove does not make a sourcing claim about any individual piece without paperwork to back it.
About this piece
Every crystal carving in the Grove is photographed on its own, and the piece in the photograph is the piece that arrives. Nothing is swapped for something similar.
These Mexican crazy lace agate butterfly wings sit in small clips on the stand arms rather than being fixed in place, so each wing lifts out and can be held. The stand has a circular cut out base and stands on its own without needing a shelf edge or a prop.
Traditional correspondences
Crazy lace agate is often called the laughter stone in traditional practice, and the association is with lifting mood and with keeping going rather than with rest or with insight. Agate generally is worked with for steadiness, and this variety carries that with more movement in it than most.
The butterfly form carries its own association, with change that has already happened rather than change being asked for. A piece this size tends to be kept somewhere it will be seen daily rather than carried.
Correspondences are traditional and are offered as part of a practice, not as a substitute for medical or professional advice.
Caring for crazy lace agate
This is one of the easier stones to live with. Agate sits at 6.5 to 7 on the Mohs scale, hard enough for everyday handling, and the colour is stable. It will not fade on a sunny windowsill the way amethyst or rose quartz does.
The vulnerable part is the carve rather than the stone. The scalloped outer edges are thin and agate is brittle, so it chips rather than scuffs when knocked. Lift the piece by the stand rather than by a wing tip, and take the wings out of the clips before moving the stand itself.
A soft dry cloth is all the cleaning it needs. To cleanse, use sound, breath or moonlight.
What you receive
The Mexican crazy lace agate butterfly wings shown in the photographs, the metal stand, and nothing else. Wrapped and posted from Shropshire by Royal Mail Tracked.
Browse the rest of the crystal carvings, or see everything currently in stock in crazy lace agate.
For the mineralogy behind the stone, Mindat holds the reference data on agate.
