Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.

Blue Lace Agate

A soft sky-blue banded chalcedony prized for its delicate, lace-like white and blue swirling patterns.

A swirling, intricately banded lace agate from Eswatini (Swaziland) in soft greys, blues and lavenders with delicate folded patterns.

A Mexican banded agate famous for tightly swirling, contorted lacy patterns in warm reds, creams, and golds.

A vividly swirling banded agate from northern Mexico with intricate looping patterns in warm reds, golds and creams.

A rare translucent lavender-blue agate from the Holley area of Oregon, prized for its soft purple-blue color.

A soft sky-blue chalcedony from the Owyhee region of Oregon and Idaho, prized for its calming, opaque powder-blue color.

A banded variety of chalcedony quartz, famed for its colorful concentric layers and enormous range of patterns and colors.

A translucent, soft blue variety of microcrystalline quartz whose color comes from light scattering through its fine structure.

Glacially deposited banded agates found along Lake Michigan beaches, small waterworn pebbles with concentric red and grey banding.

Glacially transported banded agates found along Lake Huron's shores, typically small, frosted pebbles with red-orange iron banding.

A waxy, translucent microcrystalline form of quartz that serves as the parent group for agate, jasper, carnelian, and onyx.

A glacier-transported banded agate from the Lake Superior region, colored by iron into rich reds and oranges, and Minnesota's state gemstone.

A rare, intensely blue chalcedony colored by copper-rich chrysocolla, prized as the most valuable of the blue chalcedonies.

A prized Oregon picture jasper from the Deschutes region known for soft scenic landscapes in cream, tan, and blue-gray.

A glacially transported agate found in Midwestern gravels, named for the Coldwater area, showing banded chalcedony patterns.