Marble – Picasso

Scientific Name:

Group: Metamorphic rock

Chemical composition: Calcite with other minerals.

Colors: Banded or patterned browns, grays or blacks from iron oxides.

Hardness:

Principal Sources: Worldwide

Special Notes: Marble is a metamorphic equivalent of limestone, and this material appears to have been altered to marble by its contact with igneous material, which “cooked” the limestone and flooded the stone with solutions that traveled through a network of fractures, coloring the stone. The marble is fine-grained, takes a satin-finish polished, and is found in southwestern Utah. Picasso marble is named after a geometric grid of black and tan lines that criss-cross the matrix of the stone, resembling an abstract painting.