We love this dramatic, intense and fluid image created by rapidly cooling lava because that is what obsidian is: lava.
From that you can understand the swirls of once liquified, high temperature lava, and its jet blackness coming from the colour of lava. In fact, it was called volcanic glass by Pliny.
It is found all over the world from Easter Island to the Greek islands, and been used by proto-humans for over 700,000 years, but more recently for arrowheads, as a mirror, for ornaments, and even today as scalpels by surgeons as it is much sharper than steel.
As an artwork that continues to please, we think it has an equally appreciated future.