Fordite

"Fordite, also known as Motor Agate, is a unique automotive enamel material with an interesting history. The original layered automotive paint slag 'rough' was made incidentally, years ago, by the now extinct practice of hand spray-painting multiples of production cars in big automotive factories. 

The oversprayed paint in the painting bays gradually built up on the tracks and skids that the car frames were painted on. Over time, many colorful layers built up there. These layers were hardened repeatedly in the ovens that the car bodies went into to cure the paint. Some of these deeper layers were even baked 100 times. 

Eventually, the paint build-up would become obstructing, or too thick and heavy, and had to be removed. As the story goes, some crafty workers with an eye for beauty realized that this unique byproduct was worth salvaging. It was super-cured, patterned like psychedelic agate, and could be cut and polished with relative ease!"  - taken from fordite.com 
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I'm obsessed with this stuff.  In addition to mad housecleaning, I am also using the internet as a tool for avoidance of reality, and as I stumbled through the rabbit hole of Etsy, I came across Fordite.

As the history blurb above details, this is a reclaimed thing, something that occurred as an accident, a nuisance byproduct for the auto industry.  How beautiful this nuisance is, though.

I wonder who the first person to notice the internal loveliness under the unsightly exterior was, who the first person to scratch the surface and find more than was expected.

Fordite, or Detroit Agate, isn't produced anymore.  Technology changed the manufacturing process, and this side-effect doesn't happen now.  What I'm sure the industry looked at as a waste now fetches as much money as some "real" gemstones, especially if it can be proven to have come from a particular auto maker, model, or factory, for example the Corvette factory in Bowling Green, KY.  I even saw one piece marked as "mustangite."  Guess what it was supposed to have come from?

I have found a piece on Etsy that I really love....well, probably more like five pieces, but still...and when my money from the AP reading comes, I am going to splurge on a piece.  Aside from the incredible visual appeal of it, I like the symbolic reminder that it's what's under the surface that matters, that the world rarely takes the time to look for less-than-screaming-in-its-face-obvious value and is prone to discard things of beauty and rarity.  It's a lesson worth remembering about a tendency worth avoiding.

I don't think that's too much philosophy to hang from a silver chain, right?  If it's too much for you, I guess you can just enjoy all the pretty colors.  To each, her own.