This is one of the most unique, truly one of a kind natural sculptures in petrified wood you’re ever going to see! This is a large section from a heavily weathered petrified palm tree that was carefully hand carved into this remarkable 3-D sculpture! It’s 100% natural petrified palm in a very striking, highly polished cream and gray color pattern that looks simply beautiful when viewed in person. This is a very large piece at nearly 2 feet long and weighing well over 50 lbs, but is actually a nice size that I think a creative decorator could even place on a table as a natural sort of presentation bowl. This is not a piece I polished as I simply lack the skill and patience to create a 3-D carving like this, but the work is world class and the story is fascinating! The unmistakable growth structure of palm is revealed in this beautifully finished sculpture, including vascular bundles exposed from all angles. It’s a beautiful piece by any measure. Every angle and surface has been polished save for one rough piece of stone near the tip that still shows the natural form of this beautiful fossil gemstone before polishing. Read on to learn more about the circumstances that have created this one time opportunity for a natural artwork none of us is likely to see again! When I travelled through Burma last year purchasing petrified logs to cut and polish in my shop, I came across a small village with several men sitting on a large pile of petrified logs. They let me poke around with some bizarre limits on what I was allowed and not allowed to see, guided by motivations I still can’t quite decipher. The negotiation seemed to involve a lot of back and forth with the entire gang of barefoot fellows wearing longyis (a tube of fabric worn as sort of wrap around skirt) and chewing betel nuts. Once the deal was made, I was shown another part of the compound behind huge mounds of what appeared to be peanuts and met a handful of brightly dressed crafstmen busily grinding away on the outside of some petrified logs with hand tools that amounted to little more than grinding and buffing wheels on a flexible arbor. They were each working patiently to contour the outer surface of a log to reveal the gemstone hidden beneath the rough, weathered exterior of the log. When finished, they would typically have worked the exterior of roughly half the log into a beautifully flowing polished display of agate and opal that was suprisingly well polished. Unlike the cutting and flat polishing done in my shop and popular among western collectors, the pieces prepared this way were massive, heavy obilisques intended to be displayed as a central viewing stone in a room, entry or lobby. I’d seen this style of work as I’d travelled in other parts of Asia and knew that this was how most petrified wood was prepared in this part of the world, but it was the first time I’d seen the work being done! I watched them work for an hour or so, almost not believing that they could have the patience to work a piece so large into the giant final shapes I’d seen in some courtyards in the area already, but they didn’t seem to tire of the tedious work and kept grinding and buffing away at the small contours of the log sitting in front of them, smiling back and inviting me to inspect their work even! I’ve been agonizing over which of these amazing pieces I’d keep as my own conversation piece from this amazing journey and which to sell. I’m confident when you see this stone, you’ll be as impressed as I was standing there watching these workers crafting these ancient fossils into remarkable works of art. While these adventures provide a certain degree of color in my own life, I ultimately do it for my own passion for these amazing stones and the ancient stories they tell. I have not been able to date any of these logs yet (but I will continue to work on it and share that info when I have it). It is my sincere hope that a rare and uncommon specimen for your own collection as the fruits of these early endeavors to find a new source will be something you can enjoy as well. Trust me, it sounds like a lot more fun than it is as that trip alone took my body a couple of solid weeks to recover from each trip to a country that has only recently begun to open itself up through a series of highly published political and economic changes that they are still struggling with. Since that trip, the political situation has taken a turn for the worse and if things stay on that track we may soon lose the ability to trade or travel in this region. The petrified wood from Myanmar is quite different from those I find here in the Pacific Northwest and as my own interests gravitate towards variety in species as much as locations you can imagine how exciting it is to be able to expand my collection in new dimensions! I hope you’ll take this chance to do the same and obtain one of these nice collector sized slabs for your own collection! It takes a fantastic polish which really brings out every detail in the finely patterned cell structure which is easily visible to the naked eye. Palmoxolon (petrified palm) is readily identifiable from the unique spotted wood grain that looks like a bundle of spaghetti cut in cross section. This would make a wonderful decorator piece or addition to any petrified wood collection! This piece measures about 23″ long and 12 wide” across the polished face and is a little over 4 thick near the fatter end. The item “SiS 23 BURMESE Petrified Palm Wood Sculpture Myanmar Fossil Palmoxylon Art” is in sale since Thursday, November 2, 2017. This item is in the category “Collectibles\Rocks, Fossils & Minerals\Fossils\Vegetation\Petrified Wood”. The seller is “rockshop” and is located in Beaverton, Oregon. This item can be shipped worldwide.