Earth’s history in colour
These rocks are not simply old—they are evidence. Each fragment, each colour, is a record of pressure, upheaval, or just a thousand years of drizzle. From the pinks of molten granite to the rusty scars of ancient tides, this collection traces the secret palette of deep time across the British landscape.
From the Curator
"Surface colour reveals the secret business of the planet’s crust. Iron turns red when it breathes; green hints at minerals laid down in vanished lagoons. Lichens and algae colonise, weather, and record the air. Put these together, and the rock face becomes a living archive—millions of years old, still changing."
by Thomas
Pink granite is slow fire made visible—cooled deep underground 280 million years ago, its salmon hue comes from potassium feldspar, crystals so large they glint in sunlight. In the Cairngorms, whole mountains are made of this: a single, stubbornly pink sentence in earth’s geological memoir.
by Thomas
Gneiss and granite lie side by side along the Avon Fault—one forged under pressure so great it bends minerals into bands, the other crystallised from magma. The Variscan orogeny, 300 million years ago, crushed continents and left a seam of contrasting stone beneath Bristol’s feet. You can see the story in a single rock: pink, grey, black, interleaved with time.
by Thomas
Red in the Mercia Mudstone is iron oxide—a sign this rock was laid down in sweltering Triassic lagoons, as Britain drifted north through desert latitudes 240 million years ago. The green is glauconite, made only where slow water and low oxygen let iron turn quietly green instead. One stone, two climates.
by Thomas
Sandstone from Ladye Bay is a stack of vanished rivers, every grain a fossilised flood. Look at the layering: each stratum is a pause, a drought, a storm. The green and grey patches are minerals drawn up by groundwater, painting a mineral barcode through the sediment.
by Thomas
Devonian sandstone from Bristol is a relic of 400-million-year-old river deltas. The red runs deep—iron again, oxidised as continents collided. The coarse granules are time in granular form, worn from mountains that no longer exist.
by Thomas
Avon Gorge’s limestone wears purple—a tint from manganese and iron leaching through cracks, a slow bleed that takes centuries. The rock here was once a coral reef in a Carboniferous sea, now lifted and exposed, with oxidation painting its fractured surface.
by Thomas
Weathered sandstone from the coast, clothed in marine lichens: yellow, grey, white, each colour a living indicator of salt, spray, and sun. The lichen’s acids etch the stone at 0.1 mm per century, a slow but relentless sculptor. Colour is not a veneer—it is the process.
Each piece in this collection has been thoughtfully selected to create a cohesive visual narrative. Together, they explore themes of earth’s history in colour.
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