Special Exhibition on Taiwan Museum’s Wenshi Stones Features the World’s Earliest Research on Penghu Wenshi

By MOOK Travel Life Network, Li Xinyi, compiled and reported

 

Taiwan’s first and largest special exhibition on wenshi stones—“The Insightful Eye: Taiwan Wenshi Stones Special Exhibition”—is on display at the National Taiwan Museum from now until February 24, 2013. The most eye-catching items are the wenshi stone specimens collected by the museum’s founding Japanese mineralogist Okamoto Yohachiro (1876–1960), who in 1909 published “The Wenshi Stones Produced on Penghu Islands Belong to Aragonite” in the Geological Magazine, which is the world’s earliest mineralogical research literature on wenshi stones. In addition, wenshi stones, which were previously thought to be found only in Penghu and Sicily, have recently also been discovered in the area from Sanxia to Zhudong, and these are also on display at the museum.

The National Taiwan Museum explained that the unique concentric circle patterns of Taiwan wenshi stones are also referred to as “wenshi eyes.” This is because wenshi stones are mostly found in porous basalt, which often contains vesicles. These vesicles are usually formed when gases originally present in magma rise to the surface of the lava flow as the magma erupts from deep underground to become lava, and the gases escape into the air, although some remain trapped in the lava. When the magma cools and solidifies, it forms porous basalt. The presence of vesicles, faults, or fissures in the basalt provides an environment similar to geodes, allowing wenshi minerals to grow within these spaces. Different chemical compositions, colors, and mineral types within the geode-like spaces interact to form various crystals, resulting in the beautiful concentric circle “eyes” of the wenshi patterns.

It was previously believed that only the Penghu Archipelago in Taiwan and Sicily in Italy produced wenshi stones, but the wenshi stones from Italy do not have concentric circle patterns. Therefore, Penghu wenshi stones, with their beautiful concentric circle patterns, are considered the most stunning in the world. In recent years, wenshi stones with concentric circle patterns have also been discovered in the basalt of the northern Taiwan area from Sanxia to Zhudong, commonly referred to as Sanxia wenshi stones, which are comparable in quality to Penghu wenshi stones. Hence, the museum specially named the exhibition “The Insightful Eye” and curated it to showcase both Penghu and Sanxia wenshi stones for the first time. Visit the museum’s official website at www.ntm.gov.tw.

 

 ● Extended Reading: Where Avant-Garde Meets Contemporary Art — National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts Presents Cross-Century Works from 15 Countries

http://goo.gl/zxdzs