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A translucent jellyfish carved from a single Bolivian ametrine crystal, drifting above an obsidian sea floor. One of one.
This "transparent-sea" jellyfish is hand-carved from one solid crystal of bi-color amethyst/ametrine from Bolivia. The translucency of the stone does the work of the creature's gelatinous body — light enters and seems to hang inside it — while the obsidian base reads as ocean rock. All metalwork is bronze plated with gold vermeil.
Ametrine is the rare natural bi-color of quartz: amethyst purple meeting citrine gold within a single crystal, where adjacent zones of differing iron oxidation produce the two hues side by side. It registers 7 on the Mohs scale. Bolivia's Anahí mine is essentially the world's only commercial source of natural ametrine — which makes a crystal large and clear enough to carve a jellyfish a genuine rarity. The carver works with the stone's transparency rather than against it, so the animal appears lit from within.
In the artist's reading, the jellyfish is an emblem of transparency — of letting one's inner light be seen, and of trusting the heart as a source of strength rather than vulnerability. The choice of a stone you can see straight through is the whole idea, made literal.
Luis Alberto Quispe Aparicio is a Peruvian-born lapidary sculptor and creative director of L'Aquart, heir to a family atelier whose tradition reaches back to 1968. An engineer by training, he gave the bench what engineering could not match; his carved works are held in museum collections worldwide, and since 2010 he has collaborated with S.T. Dupont on Haute Création pieces. His practice insists on harmony between lapidary carving, metalwork and structural planning — and on refusing difficulty as a reason not to proceed.
Surround Art & Diamonds — North American representative of L'Aquart — presents this work as a singular object at the intersection of lapidary art, fine craft and collecting, with nearly a decade placing Quispe Aparicio's sculptures in private collections across the United States and Europe.
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