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This unusual pendant features a free form piece of fordite which has been bezel set in an open back sterling silver setting. The 'front' is predominately red (more tomato than cherry red) with a swirly pattern in black and white with patches of sparkly blue, green and chocolate brown, the 'back' has a different pattern and is mostly white with wiggly stripes of navy, red, orange, yellow, sparkly silver and pale blue. The piece is mostly flat so will happily sit against the skin either way round so its 2 pendants in 1.
So what is fordite? It's layers of cured paint that built up in old spray booths at car plants, my research suggests that this material dates from the 70's and probably came from a General Motors plant in Detroit possibly where they made Pontiacs (I lost hours looking at photos of the original paint swatches trying to match up colours). Methods for painting cars have now changed and fordite hasn't been produced for the last decade and it is getting harder to source especially the older material. I cut and polish it myself and this particular cabochon came from the outside of the piece of rough with the red being the last colour sprayed before the built up paint was removed, I decided to not polish the top surface flat as I like the red and natural undulations. There is a groove on the back which shows up as a kink in the pattern but doesn't affect the stability of the piece.
Measures 40mm by 30mm excluding bail and comes with an 18in chain in a gift box.

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