A Chinese 'dream stone' table screen, Qing dynasty.

The tradition of these Chinese natural stone painting of a mountain range is called a dream stone, “shih-hua.” They are mostly cut from historic Dali marble found in the Cangshan mountains of western China. These mysterious mountains, unique in the world, are known for yielding incredible and fantastic natural landscaped works of art created over tens of millions of years from mineral inclusions that affected the process of ancient organic material which transformed into limestone and finally resulted in marble- a metamorphic hard stone.

This art form is centuries of years old since the Ming dynasty. Dream stones became favored art in the west particularly since the 19th century when French collectors named them “pierres de reve.”