Charoite Dice Inlaid with Bronze

This project has been around for quite some time as we have been looking for a way to offer semi precious stone dice that could stand up to the rigors of play. We don’t make shelf queens. Our dice are made to game and we back that up with a lifetime warranty. Most semi precious stone dice proved to chip easily and wouldn’t hold up to regular use. That’s no bueno.

So how did we get around stones natural propensity to chip? Simple – we cheated. This new line of dice have been crafted from semi precious stone set in a resin matrix. The end result is flawless in execution, beauty, gameability (if that’s not a word, it is now). By binding the ground semi precious stone in a resin matrix, it adds a toughness to the resulting die that unaltered stone just doesn’t have while retaining all the visual properties and heft of the original stone.

These particular dice, have been crafted from Charoite and inlaid with Bronze. Charoite is lavender to purple in color and forms in unusual swirly patterns. Also called Lilac Stone, Charoite is thought to have been discovered in 1940 along the Chara river in Siberia, but did not gain in popularity until the late 70’s. Charoite is found in massive formations in limestone deposits along with tinaksite and canasite formations. To say that Charoite is complex stone is an understatement. It is described a hydrated potassium, sodium, calcium, barium, strontium, and silicate hydroxyfluoride. Charoite is widely used in cabochon work as well as carved in to decorative objects. Thanks to the size of its natural formations Charoite is carved in to a variety of objects from small figurines to large urns like you can see below.