You’ll Never Guess How These Beautiful Stones Were Created

Fordite is a beautiful stone and a wonderful relic of urban history. The extraordinary gem looks very much like a natural agate, rippling with layers upon layers of the most vibrant colours there are. The stones were produced by car painting techniques that are no longer practised – layered spray-painting by hand in automobile factories.

This practice produced layers of enamel paint slag on the tracks and skids on which the painted cars and parts stood. As the painted cars were baked numerous times to dry and harden the paint, the overspray below them would also be baked repeatedly before eventually being removed. Keen-eyed workers who recognized the aesthetic value of the dried paint stones collected and saved them until now, when this car painting practice no longer exists. Their history makes them almost as valuable as real gems.

The limited supplies of Detroit agate are now used to create eye-catching pieces of jewellery, swirling with psychedelic patterns and inspiring nostalgia for the days gone.

These stones are available at: www.fordite.com