7" Carved Picasso Marble Turtle - Utah

Picasso marble is the trade name for a unique form of marble (metamorphic limestone) that comes out of Utah. It’s a relatively soft stone, between 4-5 on the Mohs hardness scale. It’s identifiable by its striking combination of browns, blacks, grays, and cream colors, with black veins/lines of iron oxides that web and streak through the stone.

It can also be found on the market as Picasso stone and Picasso jasper.

Marble is a fairly common metamorphic carbonate rock created from pressure, heat, and other metamorphic forces acting on sedimentary carbonate rocks like limestone or dolomite. It consists mostly of recrystallized calcite, and can take on various colors caused by chemical impurities. It is often found in geographic locations associated with tectonic activity, such as mountain ranges and fault zones.

Because marble is formed from calcite, it is relatively soft and easy to carve, but its metamorphosed properties make it quite durable. This makes it perhaps the most popular sculpting rock in the world. It has been used for sculpture and construction for thousands of years: pure white marble was especially prized among the ancient Romans and Greeks, and many surviving structures and sculptures from the Classical era are made from it. Famous landmarks such as the Taj Mahal in India, the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy, the Parthenon in Greece, and even the Washington Monument in the United States are made almost entirely from marble.

Even today, marble can symbolize refinement and classical taste, and some of the highest quality marble in the world is found around the Mediterranean, particularly in Italy and Turkey. It is quarried and cut primarily for tiling and interior decoration, though it has industrial uses as aggregate for concrete and construction, and can be ground for use as mineral filler and pigment in some paints.