Soapstone is a Dikai stone with cinnabar strips, and its color is brighter red than cinnabar. Because its color is as bright red as chicken blood, it is commonly known as chicken blood stone. The earliest chicken blood stone discovered in my country is the Yuyan Mountain chicken blood stone in Changhua, Zhejiang. Later, the Bahrain Soapstone was discovered in Bahrain Right Banner, Chifeng City, Inner Mongolia. In the 1990s, soapstone was discovered in Shaanxi, Gansu, Sichuan, Hunan, Yunnan and other places. Since the current Changhua cinnabar (mercury mine) is nearing its end, the output of soapstone produced is quite limited, and the market price is increasing day by day.

Main ingredients

Soapstone contains cinnabar, (cinnabar), quartz, calcite, antimonite, dikaiite, kaolinite, dolomite and other minerals, and most of them contain sulfide Mercury and other various silicate minerals. Different origins have different texture and composition, but they are all inseparable from the mercury sulfide component.

Soapstone is composed of two parts: "earth" and "blood". It is generally believed that the mineral component of "blood" is mainly chensil. "Earth" components, such as Changhua chicken blood stone, its "earth" mineral composition is mainly dikaiite among clay minerals, and also contains a considerable amount of kaolinite, alunite, halloysite, quartz, and pyrite wait.

Bahrain Soapstone is mainly made of kaolinite and diaspore; while the main mineral components of the finer-textured Black Frozen Soapstone and Hibiscus Frozen Soapstone are dikaiite and cinnabar; in the past few years, it was found on top of a gold mine in Jilin Dense blocks of quartz veins similar to "golden top red" were found. The cinnabar is very fine and hard and delicate in texture. It is also a hard ground stone containing cinnabar, which is locally called cinnabar jade.

Shape

Soapstone has no fixed shape and is called stone-shaped. Its colors include lump blood, striped blood, plum blossom blood, and floating cloud blood.

Blocks of blood: The distribution is irregular, one in the east and one in the west. Some stones have a large piece of red on the surface, but there is no red at all inside; some are just the opposite, so buy Chickenblood Trichoderma is very risky.

Bar blood: distributed regularly.

Plum Blossom Blood: Like a plum blossom being opened, the whole stone is full of stars.

Floating cloud blood: It occurs in the indirect place of broad bands or strips, which looks like striped blood or plum blossom blood. So its blood is like clouds in the sky.

Color

The colors of bloodstone include bright red, light red, purple red, dark red, etc. The most valuable one is the active bright red blood stone.

Location

Soapstone is produced from the head, tail and edge of the cinnabar strips of low-temperature hydrothermal deposits, volcanic rocks or hot spring sedimentary minerals, and its output is quite limited.

Uses

Soapstone is mainly used as a material for seals and craft carvings.

The formation and mining of chicken blood stone

1. Formation

Soapstone is formed from cinnabar (mercuric sulfide) that penetrates into kaolinite and ground stone. , such a natural gemstone that blends the two into one is extremely rare at home and abroad.

2. Properties

The composition of chicken blood is mercury sulfide, and the stone is dikaiite or kaolinite, with a hardness of 2-3 degrees. There are often mercury spots in the stone and a small amount of quartz particles protruding from the surface of the stone. In addition to the main component of mercury sulfide, chicken blood also contains a small amount of color-causing elements iron and titanium. They are dark dyes. Their content is the main reason why chicken blood shows different red colors. If the content is high, the blood will be dark red. . In addition, chicken bloodstone also contains different photosensitive elements such as selenium and tellurium. This is also the main reason why chicken blood fades or changes color (appears dark red) under light and heat.

3. Distribution

Changhua chicken blood stone is produced in Yuyan Mountain, Shangxi Township, Lin'an County, Zhejiang Province, and the mines are distributed in the Kangshan Ridge area.

4. Mining

Soapstone was mined in the early Ming Dynasty. At that time, the chicken blood stone was exposed on the surface of the rock. The ancients mined it based on the principle of thermal expansion and contraction. They burned firewood on the exposed chicken blood stone. After everything is heated, pour cold stream water on it to split the stone, and then use a shovel to easily remove the soapstone. There are few cracks in this mining method, but the bloodstone is likely to have turned black or darkened before being mined, and the amount of mining is also very small.

This mining method continued until the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China. The surface outcrops of soapstone had been exhausted. Instead, explosives were used to blast the holes, and then digging deeper by hand or machine

5. How to identify true and false soapstones

The blood-colored stone is called bloodstone, and the non-bloody stone is called Changshi.

When evaluating bloodstone, the first thing to look at is the red color of the "blood", which is better when it is fresh, coagulated, and thick. Fresh means red like dripping blood; condensed means gathering but not dispersing; thick means having thickness and layers that penetrate deeply into the stone layer. In addition, the location of the bloodstone is also an important basis for judging the bloodstone. The ground is what kind of stone is dyed red. The top grade of bloodstone is pure, translucent, without nails and the bright red color of blood complementing each other. Samples of soapstone can be divided into square, rectangular, oval, round, and deformed shapes. The appropriate size is roughly 5-2 cm in diameter.

Soapstone has a fine texture, toughness, and tight structure that will not fall apart under a knife.

Good bloodstones are not carved, and are best used for seals. It can be said that any chicken blood that is added with carvings is usually to cover up its flaws and is not expensive at all.

Due to the high quality and high price of bloodstone, there are many counterfeiters. Generally speaking, there are several ways to counterfeit soapstone:

(l) Mosaic method, choose a good-quality aphrodisiac stone seal, select several eye-catching places, and dig out one by one with different shades. The small pit is then embedded with red fluidized mercury paint, and after it dries naturally, it is then polished and waxed. However, the embedded chicken blood (mercuric sulfide) has no layers. At the same time, the intersection between the blood and the Changshi stone is stiff in color and has no transition.

(2) Impregnation method, take a square footstone, apply mercury sulfide on the required areas, dry in the shade, apply again, dry again in the shade to make the blood slightly layered, and then dip it in transparent resin. Make sure the whole body is soaked, pick it up and dry it, then polish it with fine water and sand. The fake bloodstone made by this method will have a yellowish appearance due to the aging of the resin, which is incompatible with the color of the stone inside. At the same time, the pores on the resin surface will be relatively large. Observe carefully with a magnifying glass. There are a few tiny scratches on the surface.

(3) Slicing and pasting method, use a cutting machine to cut the six planes of the stone seal into six paper-thin sides. Apply mercury sulfide where needed. After drying, use hot ironing and glue to stick the six originally cut sheets back as they are, and then polish the corners of the sheets and the glued joints. In this way, the red color of chicken blood looks like it was born inside the stone seal and is distributed naturally. But the level of blood can only stay on one plane after all. This type of stone seal can only be limited to square or rectangular stone seals, and nothing else will work. Because round and deformed stone seals cannot be cut and engraved, the traces of hot stamping will be revealed.

(4) Filling method, this is to add mercury sulfide to the real chicken bloodstone, and cover the surface of the added part with a very thin layer of resin, and then polish it. This kind of method adds blood to blood, which is undoubtedly the icing on the cake and greatly increases the value. At the same time there is falsehood within truth, falsehood within trueness. Therefore, for particularly good bloodstones, you must pay attention to and think of the forger's methods when observing, so as to avoid the consequences of "carelessness and loss of Jingzhou".

At present, the most famous chicken bloodstones are named Changhua chicken blood stone and Bahrain chicken blood stone according to their place of origin. According to the texture, it is generally divided into 4 categories: frozen chicken bloodstone, soft ground chicken bloodstone, soft steel plate chicken blood stone and hard steel plate blood stone. Together with Shoushan Tianhuang, it enjoys the reputation of "Queen of Seal Stones" and has made great contributions to the development of Chinese seal culture.