A turned hardwood lidded box with a polished slice of banded agate set flush into the top, the stone running in concentric waves of orange, red and cream. The interior and the base are lined in blue felt, and the base label reads MADE IN BRAZIL. Brazil supplies most of the world's agate and has since the nineteenth century, when the deposits in Rio Grande do Sul were found to be so large that the German cutting town of Idar Oberstein, which had exhausted its own local stone, relocated its entire supply chain to South America. The bands you can see are growth layers, laid down inside a gas cavity in ancient lava as silica rich water seeped through over an enormous span of time, each band a change in the chemistry of the water. Cutting the nodule at the right angle to display them is the skill, because the same stone cut the wrong way is a grey lump. Warm orange agate is usually enhanced, since natural agate tends to grey and brown, and dyeing agate is a documented Idar Oberstein proces