The Philosophy of Ammonite Art
The Bearpaw ammonite’s remarkable range of natural color combined with it’s solid, endurable form creates opportunity and imagination for an endless pantheon of “objets d’art”. Most of these pieces are in private collections – some we still have. Present owners are usually interested in gfenerous offers or we will always accept commissions for any new ideas or to recreate any of these dependent on the availability of materials.
The Ammolith Thinking Post
Since the dawn of man’s conscious awakening, when he first tried to understand the environment around him, the Ammonite has been there. Wherever man came in from the surf, out of the forests or burrows; as he crawled in, over and around this planet he found evidence of life that came before him. Myths, legends, superstitions and speculations that used the Ammonite as an Icon developed. The Ammonite was man’s first Icon. The first universally recognized symbol of the complexity of life. The first philosophical statement. The first religious symbol.
Since before the beginning of recorded time all people, from all lands have been fascinated with the Ammonite and the spiral that represents it. Drawn, painted and carved on cave walls, rock outcroppings and cliff faces from Australia to Greenland, Hawaii to Indonesia early man has recorded the form of the Ammonite, knowing that it had a special significance in the understanding of life. Perhaps from the contemplation of the spiral form; the broadly generated curve that grows proportionately ever smaller, reducing itself to nothing came the genesis of understanding for the concept of math or numbers. From everything to nothing and back again, symbolizing life and death, infinity to zero.
Expressions of stone spirits
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Naturally simple, yet surprisingly complex, ammonites defy ambivalence. You are drawn into the structure of the spiral relinquishing control of your imagination to the suggestive shape of the stone.