Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences

The John Watson Building Stones Collection

Read stories about the specimens in Watson's collection

Anston Stone and the Houses of Parliament

Close-up of buff-coloured stone showing a fine, even granular texture

Belgian Marble and a Trip to the Vatican

Close-up of black marble with irregular white calcite veining running through the polished surface.

Crocidolite and its Shocking Past Use

Close-up of a banded specimen showing alternating layers of golden-brown and dark grey-brown fibrous mineral with a silky, striated texture, with a museum label reading "CROCIDOLITE."

Devonshire Granite and London Bridge

Close up of the surface of a granite showing coarse interlocking crystals. The crystals are black, grey, and beige

German Suevite and a Mysterious Crater

Close up of a suevite, showing dark angular rock fragments embedded in a lighter grey matrix

Riebeckite Microgranite in Curling Stones

A front facing image of the polished surface of a cube of granite. The base colour is pale grey and covered in uniformly distributed darker speckles.

Rubislaw Granite and an Iconic Nickname

Close-up of dark grey granite with coarse pink crystals set among abundant black spots

South African Granite and Cecil Rhodes

Close-up of pale granite with large black and beige crystals scattered through a white and grey base.

Stone Mountain Granite and its History

Close-up of pale grey granite with a fine, uniform speckled texture