It's a kind of dark magic

Immersed in myths of monkey puzzle trees and sorcery, blackly beautiful Whitby jet deserves to shake off its mournful, if illustrious past, says Harry Pearson

-  Harry Pearson

TWO reasons why the North Yorkshire town of Whitby is so celebrated are dark, smooth, and elegant.

One is Count Dracula, the other is Whitby jet. That both are associated with mournful Victorians also accounts for Whitby's attraction to those of a Gothic frame of mind.

Popular legend has it that jet is the fossilised remains of an ancestor of a monkey puzzle tree deposited on the Yorkshire coast 180 million years ago. 'That's a myth,' asserts Whitbybased gemmologist Sarah Steele of Ebor Jetworks. 'Whitby jet was actually formed from many different types of wood, but I think Victorian jewellers liked the idea of the monkey puzzle tree. It's certainly an appealing story." Whitby jet is light, warm to the touch, hard enough to carve and can be polished to a sheen.

Its most noted quality is the depth of its blackness. As Shakespeare has it in Henry VI: 'Black, forsooth: coal-black as jet.' When you look into a piece, you almost feel as if you've been absorbed into its darkness. 'The Aztecs used jet to produce mirrors, through which they believed they could contact the spirit world,' says Ms Steele.