Paulo Florio Giafarov - paulo@dggstones.com
With an area of approximately 8.5 million square kilometers, much of it unexplored, Brazil has an enormous potential for research and the discovery of new ornamental stones.
Apart from the well known deposits of granite in India, the country also has the biggest deposits of Green Marble (sometimes known as Verde Guatemala in the international markets). Its technical definition would be recrystallised, compact variety of metamorphosed limestone capable of taking polish, rock composed of Serpentine. The Indian green is a very compact and mature marble and is strong. Its hardness / strength is greater in comparison to other green stones found elsewhere. For example, Indian marble does not warp.
The Spaniards who reached the New World around end of the XV century or towards the beginning of the XVI century, guided by Christopher Columbus, used for the buildings of their new settlements and the main social buildings, a limestone denominated Coral Stone, which, even today, can be found in abundance in the Dominican Republic and Colombia.
This stone was formed in the riverbeds in the period Pleistocene, starting from the fossils, corals and other marine animals, thus the majority of the coral limestone has originated in the reefs.
Out of extremely wide range of stones that come from India and which have become popular all over the world, one of them goes by the name of Rainforest. In almost any stone stockyard anywhere in the world one will almost always find at least a few slabs of this attractive sandstone, though in true industry style, the name on the sticker may well be different. This article explains in more detail the complexities behind this stone much in demand.
One stone variety from Turkey is especially popular in the international markets: Travertine. Turkish travertine comes in different varieties and is similar to the travertine found in Tivoli, near Rome, Italy as well as the variety available in Iran .Turkey, as more and more people are discovering all the time, has vast resources and great variety in natural stone, with deposits spread all over the geographically big country.
This text was elaborated by geologist Cid Chiodi Filho (cdchiodi@terra.com.br), Kistemann & Chiodi Assessoria e Projetos. The primary data about exports were obtained starting from consultation to the Base ALICE of MDIC (Ministry of Development, Industry and External Trade)
Worldwide, Brazil is the 5th largest country in territorial extent and the 6th in population. Endowed with vast natural resources, Brazil is one of the ten largest mineral producers of the world.
In the last decade, Brazil has introduced hundreds of new dimension stones in the market. In fact, the number of Brazilian launches, in such a short period of time, have surpassed those of all Europe over the last two hundred years.
The scientific name Porphyry, in the modern scientific classification of rocks, it is used only as a commercial term to indicate a volcanic rock with peculiar characteristics and susceptible to particular uses. The classic porphyry and trentine is the volcanic rock coming from the Italian region of Trentino- Alto Adige.
