MS: Stones abound in Nobson, great stone forms too. Some have been arranged, some shaped into buildings, statues, sculptures. Other great stone forms seem to be anthropomorphic sculptures that are bound or carved as if they are bound, as if there is some struggle with their form.
The philosophers’ stone is a legendary alchemical substance held to be capable of turning base metal such as lead into gold. For alchemists the effort to discover the philosophers stone was known as the Magnum Opus (the great work). The starting ingredient was known as prima materia (first matter), the common source or substance, the raw substance that lies behind all things.
PN: Schwitters: "Stone upon stone, this is how a cathedral is built"
(Rock) 2013, 30 x 60 cm
PN: Scholar's Rocks in Ancient China p.77 Yanshan Hemin Hu Collection
MS: I recognize this stone - it is outside the Delaval Arms in Old Hartley, between Blyth and Whitley Bay in the NE of England, and was famously lifted by Blyth blacksmith and strongman William Carr (died 1825).
