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Alabaster

General Information
A variety or type of:Gypsum
Alabaster Treatments
Webster (p.298) reports that carved alabaster objects are often immersed in cold water, the temperature of which is slowly raised to boiling and then again slowly cooled; these changes are the appearance of the alabaster so that it looks more like the much harder white marble. Heating may 'open pores' or produce cracks which permit better penetration of dyes.
Dyeing and colored oiling have often been used to make alabaster more attractive and, for example, to distinguish the two colors in chess boards and in carved chess pieces. Carbed objects are also often waxed and may be coated with paint when in statue form - Nassau (1984)
Mohs Hardness
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( ! ) mysqli_sql_exception: Illegal mix of collations (latin1_swedish_ci,IMPLICIT) and (utf8mb3_uca1400_ai_ci,COERCIBLE) for operation '=' in /big/www/gemdat/gemshow_class.php on line 690
Call Stack
#TimeMemoryFunctionLocation
10.0011360344{main}( ).../gshow.php:0
20.1470749560gemshow_class->do_physical( ).../gshow.php:149
30.1470766136gemshow_class->showblock( $txt = 'HARD-MIN' ).../gemshow_class.php:1113
40.1472783272gemshow_class->showdata( $dataname = 'HARD-MIN' ).../gemshow_class.php:505
50.1472783672query( $query = 'select * from mineralproperties,mineralpropertytypes where \r\n\t\t\t\t\tmp_mpt_id=mpt_id and mpt_code=\'HARD-MAX\' and \r\n\t\t\t\t\tmp_min_id=\'90\' and mp_deleted=0 and\r\n\t\t\t\t\tmp_reference=\'Gems, Sixth edition\' and\r\n\t\t\t\t\tmp_referenceauthor=\'Michael O’Donoghue\' and\r\n\t\t\t\t\tmp_referenceyear=\'2006\' and\r\n\t\t\t\t\tmp_referencepublisher=\'Elsevier\' and\r\n\t\t\t\t\tmp_referenceperiodical=\'\'' ).../gemshow_class.php:690