Wearing a piece of Greece

On finding obsidian in the Peloponnese

Giorgio reached into the dashboard of his old Lada and handed me a little plastic bag containing a handful of matte black stones, chiselled and smoothed into pendant-shaped droplets. As we emptied them onto the car bonnet, something about them immediately fascinated me. I wasn’t sure if they were beautiful, but they were strangely intriguing, and Giorgio’s workmanship gave them a character of their own.

For a moment I didn’t say a word as I turned them over in my hands, trying to figure out what they were. I was puzzled, captivated by what felt like an ancient kind of curiosity. They weren’t made of any stone I was familiar with, nor were they metallic, and although they weren’t very heavy, their hardness and the sharpness of the clinking sounds they made as they jostled together confirmed that they weren’t plastic either. All my senses were tuned to the task, but I didn’t have an answer. I asked Giorgio.

Obsidian! His own little collection, all found in these surrounding hills of the Peloponnese.

Sometimes the distinction between gemstones and plain old rocks appears arbitrary. When we admire the beauty of a material that happens to be abundant and therefore worthless, we might feel that its preciousness is being overlooked. But sometimes an artefact from the natural world can make our senses buzz, and its value feels inevitable, stemming from something innate within us.

Gneiss on the Isle of Harris in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. Often very beautiful stone, although not traditionally considered precious.

This stash of Peloponnesian obsidian is actually quite mysterious because, according to the sources I’ve seen, you have to go to certain volcanic islands around Greece to find obsidian. It’s is a type of igneous rock, formed from quickly cooling lava under quite particular circumstances. You don’t find it here in Laconia – not officially anyway. There’s something to uncover here, and it would help if I spoke better Greek. Either Giorgio has stumbled upon artefacts which have had ancient previous lives as arrowheads or tools, originally sourced from other regions, or he knows of a potentially unregistered deposit of obsidian in the Peloponnese. (There are other explanations but Giorgio’s honesty is, I believe, unquestionable.)

He has agreed that when I return later this year he’ll tell me more about finding obsidian in these hills and show me how he shapes them into these curious mementoes, so I’ll write a fuller post about it here when the time is right. He also makes a mean-looking bushcraft knife, and has promised to let me photograph him at work. His knives and his obsidian carving share a simple kind of rough-cut beauty; you can tell they’re shaped by the same hands. Old skills and personal stories that lend them meaning are what I want to become the mainstays of this newsletter, Ways of Life. Little plans are afoot…

Thousands of years ago, obsidian had real practical value. Being hard and durable, and tending to fracture with sharp edges when smashed, much like flint, it was ideal for creating blades and weaponry. As a kind of glass it could also be made into a mirror, so it also found a role in ornaments and jewellery. (Imagine only knowing what you look like by catching your broken reflection in water or polished rock…) Today obsidian is valuable only as a curiosity, and its meaning is primarily symbolic. If you’re mystically inclined you might attribute healing properties to it, believing its deep black robustness to indicate that it creates a barrier to negative energy. I reckon that’s a bit woo-woo, but this find still feels significant.

Discovering Giorgio’s obsidian pendants was a stroke of luck. I had been casually hoping to find a suitably symbolic pendant on this journey, but I never imagined something like this. I’m quite particular about jewellery and find no reason to wear any that doesn’t strike a personal chord. Buying it in a shop doesn’t interest me. I have only ever had one piece – a leather bracelet which I bought at a folk festival during a rather turbulent summer, from a maker whose story chimed with how I was feeling. Wearing it reminds me of certain modes of thought from that time that I wish to hold onto.

To wear a piece of obsidian from within a few miles of my house, discovered and shaped by someone I know, and to buy it from him directly rather than via the anonymous intermediary of a shopkeeper or an Etsy webpage, and to receive it straight from his hands rather than a jiffy bag, and for him to take a string from around his own neck to hang it on… call me daft but the directness of all this matters to me.

The following evening, returning from my walk with Alfie, I found a large handful of wild asparagus waiting for me on the bonnet of my car – the fruits of Giorgio’s latest forage.

Another bonnet deposit.