Member, Mary Fairchild sent in this report from her visit to the Lizzadro Museum of Lapidary Art: Chinese Jade Carvings, Fossils, and Minerals
The upper level of the Lizzadro Museum of Lapidary Art displays a large selection of Chinese jade and hard stone carvings from around the world and the lower level of the museum presents lapidary materials, fossils, meteorites, and minerals. Jim and I stopped in recently and chatted with Dorothy Ascher who is the granddaughter the museum's founder, Joseph Lizzadro.
A lapidary hobbyist and collector, her grandfather would bring his growing family rockhounding up to the Keweenaw Peninsula of Upper Michigan where his wife was raised. They would collect different stones that he would later cut, polish, and make into jewelry for friends.
In an interesting contrast, just as the Lizzadro Museum doors opened just outside of Chicago in the early 1960s, Confucius statues that stood for centuries were labeled as decadent and torn down in China. People where burning their heirlooms and priceless Ming vases were shattered and thousand-year-old Buddhist murals were vandalized beyond repair.
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