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Show Crystal Balls Made of Quartz in Japan HT HE quartz globes made by the lapidaries & 1 of Japan." writes Herbert Wnitlock, IK curator of mineralogy In the American Museum W of Natural History, In ths Scientific American. m "are cut from flawless quartz crystals, clean and E absolutely colorless, and are usually mounted on K bronze wrought into decorative forms, such as G dragons, storks, tortolser, and grotesque bumaa M figures. The clear, polished ball, contrasting V with its dark bronze mountings is pre-eminently 9 an artistic object, lending itself with especial facility to the Japanese taste, which sets aside K one beautiful thing as sufficient to admire In an S entire room. K- "In a certain sense no less marvellous than the ig alleged occult powers of the crystal ball are the M simple mean- employed by the Japanese artisans g In producing them. This art. which, it is said. '1 has been bunded Jown from father to son for ;E generation?, consists of manual dexterity carried H to a superlative degree. Armed with only two prim- E Hive tools. t;)? lapidary shapes from an angular 1 quarts crvstal s phere of perfect roundness and 9 high polish The quartz crystal Is first roughly shaped to tho form of a ball by chipping and abraldlng If with a plee of steel about twelve Inehes long and one-half inch wide, which has a R Concave ed?e sornwh.it like a carpenter's gouge. in When bv me.ins of this treatment the mass has I bean made round and approximately smooth a Joint of bamboo Is user to complete the polishing quartz dust, which lodges in the pores of the I bamboo, and finally rouge furnishing the abra- ! sires " i I |