Black Onyx Tumbles | Small

For holding your centre when the situation isn't calm.

Onyx is a banded chalcedony, and the black variety is dense, fine-grained and unusually solid in the hand. Polished, it takes a mirror finish that almost no other opaque stone matches — which is why the Romans carved it into cameos and signet rings, cutting through a black layer to a white one beneath.

The name comes from the Greek onyx, fingernail. The myth: Cupid cut Venus's nails while she slept, and the clippings fell into the Indus and turned to stone, because nothing of a goddess can perish.

Onyx is worked with for steadiness under pressure and for self-mastery — the discipline to not react. It sits with the root. Traditionally worn rather than displayed, which is why so much of it turns up as beads and rings.

Sheri chooses every piece by hand, cleanses it, and charges it before it's packed here on the Gold Coast.