Missouri Botanical Garden - Chapungu Nature, Man, And Myth

Voice: Roy Guthrie All of the stone comes from Zimbabwe. When we first started the sculpture movement 50 years ago we couldn't find stone. But today, there is stone found all over the country and stones of great beauty and different strengths and different hardnesses. So it ranges from the springstone, which is very hard serpentine, to the opal stone, which is a softer green serpentine, through to granites and dolomites and marbles and limestones and then some very unique stones like verdite, which is probably the rarest of the 3 great green stones; jade, malachite and verdite. Verdite is only found in 2 deposits in the world and the highest quality verdite comes from Zimbabwe. So, the artists have used all of these different stones. The best artists prefer the hardest stones and so they don't work in the soft soap stones and soft serpentines, but use only the harder stones. But we are rich in stone; we have beautiful stones throughout the country.