Abalone Shell Mexico

A polished Mexican abalone shell, five to six inches across, blue and green through the inside. Sarimoire say these are sustainably collected. Ours get used mostly as a smoke bowl, but they are just as often a dish for rings, a crystal tray, or a thing that sits on a shelf and catches the light.

Abalone is a sea snail, not a clam. That row of holes along one edge is the giveaway: the animal sits clamped to a rock, draws water in under the shell, passes it over its gills and vents it out through those holes, along with its waste and, in season, its eggs or sperm straight into the open water. Four to ten are open at a time. As the shell grows forward the animal seals the old ones and opens new ones at the front.

The color is structural, not pigment. The inside of the shell is nacre, built from microscopic aragonite platelets stacked in layers roughly the thickness of a wavelength of light, so the light bouncing off successive layers interferes with itself and comes back split into color. Tilt it and the colors move, because the angle changed. That is also why a burn mark is permanent: heat wrecks the stack.

Good to Know

5 to 6 inches. Natural product, so the color, the size and the shape all vary and yours will not match the photograph. Put a layer of sand in the bottom before you burn anything in it. The shell is calcium carbonate and it will scorch, and once the nacre has taken heat the color is gone from that patch for good. Sand takes the heat instead and it also lets you stub a stick out cleanly. Rinse and dry it if it gets ashy. Keep it off a hot sunny sill too, not because the color fades (structural color has no pigment to fade) but because sustained heat dries the nacre out and cracks it.

Try It With

A 9 inch white sage bundle or a palo santo stick to burn in it, and a turkey feather to move the smoke. The New Zealand paua shell is the deeper-colored one. More in burnables.