Description
Red leopard jasper tower, carved and polished into a six sided point with a flat cut base. At 28cm tall and 1072g this is one of the largest towers we have listed, and it holds a shelf or a hearth on its own.
The ground is a soft cream and pale pink, and across it sits the spotting the stone is named for: hundreds of small orbs in grey, brown and rust, some tight and ringed like eyes, others spreading into loose blotches. Running through all of it are veins of deep rust red, thin and branching in places and opening into one broad saturated red panel near the top of the front face. The polish is high and even across all six faces.
About this red leopard jasper tower
Every tower in the Grove is photographed as it is, under ordinary light and without pushing the red. This stone is often sold under strongly warmed photography that makes the whole piece look brick coloured, when in the hand it reads much paler and pinker with the red concentrated in the veining. The photographs here show the actual balance.
Worth knowing: leopard skin jasper is not really a jasper. It is a rhyolite, a volcanic rock, and the spots are orbicular mineral growths formed as it cooled and altered. Jasper is a name lapidarists have long applied to opaque decorative stone of almost any origin, which is how a volcanic rock came to be sold under it. None of that makes the stone less interesting, but it does explain why no two pieces pattern alike.
Traditional correspondences
Leopard jasper is traditionally worked with for steadiness and for following something through. Where the clear stones get reached for when the intention is insight, this one belongs to the slower category, the stones kept for endurance and for staying with a thing that is taking longer than expected. The spotted pattern picked up an older association with watchfulness, the sense of something keeping an eye on the road ahead.
A tower is the form chosen for direction and focus, and at this size it works as a floor or hearth piece as readily as a desk one. It sits well with root and sacral intentions, and pairs with smoky quartz, carnelian or red jasper.
Correspondences are traditional and are offered as part of a practice, not as a substitute for medical or professional advice.
Caring for red leopard jasper
This is one of the hardier towers in the shop. The stone sits around 6.5 to 7 on the Mohs scale, there are no open pockets or thin edges to chip, and the colour will not fade in a bright room. It handles being dusted, moved and lived with.
The two things worth knowing are weight and the point. At over a kilo it will chip a tiled floor or a stone hearth if it goes over, so set it somewhere it is not going to be knocked, and lift it with both hands. The tip is the one part of any polished tower that takes damage easily, so avoid resting anything against it.
A dry soft cloth is all it needs. To cleanse, use sound, breath or moonlight.
What you receive
One red leopard jasper tower, 28cm tall and 1072g, and nothing else. Wrapped for the post and sent by Royal Mail Tracked.
Browse the rest of the crystal towers, or see everything currently in stock in jasper.
For the mineralogy behind the name, Mindat sets out how broadly the term jasper has been applied.
