Canary Island Lava 12mm x 18mm Olive Bead - 1 pc. (P868)

I'M SO THRILLED ABOUT HAVING THIS Black Lava BEAD! They feel so good to the touch and have the "nicest" energy - soft, smooth and flowing. And they have such a great story behind them.

• Quantity: 1 piece
• 12mm x 18mm Canary Island Lava Bead
• Each bead is slightly different based on the one-of-a-kind nature of the stones

Our vendor was thrilled to share more info with us because we were from Hawaii, and had possible knowledge of volcanoes.  Yes.. I know a lot.. they erupt and can spit fire.  Run! :)

He shared this story: "We started selling beads made from Lava from Indonesia in 2001. However, we were not satisfied with the quality of this lava. It was too porous and scratched on the skin. Also the color was mostly brownish or dark gray, never black. As black is a much more attractive colour to be used in jewelry than gray, and since we will never dye our materials (different from the imitations of our lava beads made by some Chinese companies) we started looking for a new source of naturally black Lava, which we found on the Canary Islands. 

Lava, especially our naturally black Lava from the Canary Islands, has a very nice texture (porosity) and it's got a very smooth good feel, much different from lava from Indonesia or other locations. Besides, it's quite interesting to wear a piece of jewelry 'which once came out of a volcano.'

The main difficulty working with lava is not so much to manufacture the beads or rings, the tools used are the same as those we use when producing our products made of precious stones, but to find the raw material. We can not order this material from anywhere. There is nobody selling it. Therefore we fly to the Canary Islands ourselves once a year, where we stay for two weeks gathering pieces of naturally black lava. The problem is, that 99 % of lava is gray and not black, even on the Canary islands. So we spend a lot of our personal time in order to find this 1% of really natural black lava. Although lava isn't quite as hard as precious or semi precious stones, we can produce similar designs we make with our other materials.

As some Chinese companies started invading the market with cheap copies of dyed lava, we thought our sales might decrease. This was not the case though. Our customers clearly note the difference and are willing to pay the price for the quality of our product."

End story :)

Now a word from your history-loving sponsor: The Canary Islands are an archipelago of seven islands of volcanic origin in the Atlantic Ocean, off the north-western coast of Africa.  Because of their location, they have historically been considered a bridge between the four continents of Africa, North America, South America, and Europe.  Pretty cool stuff!!

* Yes you can add essential oils to this!