page_title: Ashford Black Marble
section_title: Manufacturing techniques
hierarchical_section_title: Ashford Black Marble / Manufacturing techniques
caption_attribution_description: English: Loxoceras breynii (extinct nautiloid) "Petrificata derbiensia: or, Figures and descriptions of petrifactions ..." By William Martin - 1809- said by miners to look like croc tail and found in Ashford Black Marble In two parts / By William Martin Published 1809
context_page_description: Ashford Black Marble is the name given to a dark limestone, quarried from mines near Ashford-in-the-Water, in Derbyshire, England. Once cut, turned and polished, its shiny black surface is highly decorative. Ashford Black Marble is a very fine-grained sedimentary rock, and is not a true marble in the geological sense. It can be cut and inlaid with other decorative stones and minerals, using a technique known as pietra dura.
context_section_description: The limestone can be turned on a lathe to create urns, candlesticks and other similar objects, or sawn to produce smooth, flat items such as obelisks and paperweights. Derby Museum and Art Gallery holds collections of worked and part-worked items of Ashford Black Marble, acquired from an inlaying workshop owned by the Tomlinson family. This includes a range of pre-cut pieces ready for inlaying into the black marble background. Items such as forget-me-not and lily of the valley flowers would typically be represented. Coloured rocks to inlay into the black "marble" included grey, blue and purple minerals locally from Monyash, "rosewood" from Nettler Dale in Sheldon which consisted of red and white layers, barytes which created other variations, the local Castleton Blue John which could create purple, and yellow flourspar from Crich, whilst "Birds-Eye" rock had a design made from the fossils that it contained. The rarest mineral was known as "Duke's Red" and this was so valuable that it was stored at Chatsworth House. The tabletop design illustrated shows some of the combinations described here.
  In the late 1780s Derbyshire geologist White Watson began to create explanatory geological tablets using Ashford Black Marble into which other local rocks were inlaid so as to represent the strata of the rocks in different parts of the county. Derby Museum has a diagram of Ecton Hill (see picture) made from Ashford Black Marble and other minerals.
  William Martin, who at one time worked with Watson, wrote the first scientific study of fossils. His Petrifacta Derbiensia  recounts that White Watson's uncle and workers at the Black Marble quarry called some of the fossils "crocodile tails" as they thought they were the remains of crocodiles.
  The craft of inlaying black marble was resumed in the 1990s by Don Edwards, who ran a rock and mineral dealership in the Derbyshire village of Tideswell. In 2006 it was announced that Buxton Museum had purchased the Black Marble collection that had been left by John Michael Tomlinson. He had spent over 50 years putting together the collection after finding that his ancestors had been involved in Ashford Black Marble manufacturing. Derby Museum has a diagram of Ecton Hill made from Ashford Black Marble and other minerals.
caption: Fossil found in Black Marble by William Martin of a type that was once thought to be a crocodile tail[5]
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