Fulgurites
Cast aluminium and iron

​Coopland Gallery, London. 2014
Sutton Gallery, Edinburgh. 2014
Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh. 2014

When lightning strikes the earth, electrons flow outward in all directions. Petrified lightning or fulgurite is sometimes made when lightning strikes and fuses certain materials. If lightning strikes sand of the proper composition, the high temperature of the stroke may fuse the sand and convert it to silica glass. “Petrified lightning” is a permanent record of the path of lightning in earth, and is called a fulgurite, after fulgur, the Latin word for lightning. A fulgurite usually takes the shape of the roots of a tree. In effect it gives us a picture of the forklike routes taken by lightning after striking the ground. A fulgurite is quite brittle and varying in colour depending upon the type of material which they were formed. Fulgurites are produced not only in sand but also in rocks and metal. When lightning strikes a surface, particles are consolidated and fused together.

Cast aluminium, 20x20x20cm, 2014.

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A fine example of an iron fulgurite was obtained from a prospector in California, in the early l940’s. While ferreting around Indio, in Riverside County, California, a grizzled prospector came across it in a peat bog. He didn’t know what the peculiar thing was, but he suspected some geologist would be interested in it. He sold it to a dealer in Hollywood but during transit the specimen was stolen, rumours were told of it appearing in black market geologist auction houses but the specimen was never recovered. One of the few examples of a complete iron fulgurite is still missing to this day.
Theo Shields