Owyhee Picture Jasper

Jasper can appear as an opaque rock of shades of red or brown due to mineral impurities. Patterns can arise from the formation process and from flow patterns in the sediment or volcanic ash that was saturated with silica to form jasper, yielding bands or swirls in the rock.

Jasper may be permeated by dendritic minerals providing the appearance of vegetative growths. The jasper may have been fractured and/or distorted after formation, later rebonding into discontinuous patterns or filling with another material. Heat or environmental factors may have created surface rinds (such as varnish) or interior stresses leading to fracturing.

Picture jaspers simultaneously exhibit several of these variations such as banding, flow patterns, dendrites or color variations resulting in what appear to be scenes or images in a cut section as in Biggs, Deschutes, Owyhee, Poppy and other named types. 

Owyhee Picture Jasper is known for its gray or light tan background color and will often have a darker brown pattern throughout the matrix.  The best Owyhee will have some 'red' color that perhaps outlines the other colors present.

      All of our cabs are polished on the back unless otherwise stated above.