T is for "They're Eggs Jim; But Not as we Know Them!"

Time for some seasonal 'other collectables' and I've been meaning to post these every year for the last 9 years and just never got roung to it, I see them in January/February time and think 'Must do the eggs this year at Easter', then suddenly Easter's gone and I haven't even photographed them!

Nice powder-coated cast-iron egg rack (trivet?), probably French and cleverly made to take a dozen eggs. Only in this case - loaded with stone eggs! I'm sure you've all seen these about the place a great favourite of antique shops, touristy 'emporiums' and the like, a basket or bowl of marble or other polished stones.

They look like misshapen planets!

The black one is - I think - proper basalt, but I don't know, this is all guesswork and I'd hate for someone to think I was making it up as I went along! I know next to nothing about rock types!

Is the one on the left an igneous, volcanic rock of some type? It looks to have different elements which might have been 'cooked' together, while the one on the right might be the only falsely-coloured one here? The bulk of these are marble (or other stone) 'samples', using off-cuts of other jobs or smaller fragments to produce a collectable.

I know the one on the left is of sedimentary rock, disruption has lead some of the layers (particularly the thick 'ginger' layer) to bleed down cracks or faults toward or through lower layers, the older layers being the green to the left.

The one on the right is a mass of fossils, I don't know what any of them are, but I'm guessing it's from sea-shallows from all the leech-like blobs. It almost looks like a shot through a microscope at bacteria!

More fossils in this centre example which may be a nice piece of Portland sandstone. A lot of the bridges and other major structures of 'Wren's London' are Portland sandstone and it's always fun to find the fossils in the stonework. The floors of Basingrad's shopping centre are tiled with the same material and there are several places where you can see trilobite halves!

To the right is a red marble which I think is what they call 'striated' with white? This is another igneous rock, but one which has crystallised into sharper, geometric shapes than the types which cool; leaving the fluid shapes of the brown one, above.

The basalt one again contrasting with what I think is obsidian (?) carved into an egg-cup. I could Google all this and appear cleverer, but times not caught-up with the last fortnight's doing real-life stuff, and indeed it'll be close to get these posted for the holiday, I've already had to throw something into Friday's slot (where this post was supposed to go!), and it's just for fun, this is supposed to be a toy blog!

More of the believed 'obsidian' marble, here cleverly carved to fit itself, if you see what I mean? People do the same with nicely grained wooden ones. Purely decorative, but - of course - you can use the egg-cup for a real egg!