"Ruby Hummingbirds on Vase" Carved Gemstone Sculpture — L'Aquart × Luis Alberto Quispe Aparicio

Two hummingbirds carved from ornamental ruby, hovering over a zoisite bloom set in a rock-crystal vase. One of one.

The object

An elegant table sculpture: hummingbirds of ornamental ruby suspended mid-flight over a flower carved in zoisite, feeding at its nectar. The stems and leaves are gold-plated bronze; the vase is carved from clear rock crystal. The piece is presented in its own hand-made box of leather and Alcantara, branded by Surround Art Gallery.

The stones

Ruby is the red variety of corundum — crystalline aluminum oxide colored by chromium — and at 9 on the Mohs scale it is second in hardness only to diamond; in its ornamental, saturated carving grade it gives the birds their depth of red. Zoisite, a calcium aluminum silicate, frequently occurs alongside ruby in nature; here its green forms the flower. Rock crystal is colorless quartz in its clearest state, carved into the vessel that holds the arrangement.

The subject

The hummingbird is an emblem of lightness, joy and the suspended instant — a bird that holds itself still in the air. It carries particular resonance in the artist's native Peru, where the hummingbird is among the great Nazca geoglyphs etched into the desert. Here the fleeting moment of feeding is fixed permanently in stone.

The artist

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.

Offered by

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.

• Material: Ornamental ruby (birds); zoisite (flower); rock crystal (vase); gold-plated bronze stems and leaves
• Dimensions: 20 × 11 × 20 cm (7.9 × 4.3 × 7.9 in)
• Year: 2016
• Artwork origin: Peru
• Presentation: Includes a hand-made leather and Alcantara box, branded by Surround Art Gallery
• Edition: Unique, one of one
• Status: In hand, available