In the north of Afghanistan, hidden between the peaks of the Badakhshan mountain range,

For thousands of years, the Kokcha Valley has offered the largest deposit of lapis lazuli, a deep blue stone studded with gold like an oriental sky. This stone is metamorphic (made up of several minerals), which explains its whitish veins (traces of calcite), its golden flakes (presence of pyrite), or even its lighter blue hues (it is sodalite).

It wasn't born like that, but was transformed deep within the Earth's crust over millennia under the pressure of magmatic heat. This is why it is found in mountainous regions, which are often difficult to access.

It is in Afaganhistan, in the Sar-e-Sang mines, that the purest lapis in the world has been produced for over 6,000 years.

Pharaohs, Sumerian kings, Buddhist priests...all wore this hand-carved fragment of heaven as a talisman of wisdom, truth, and divine power.

The stone is still extracted by hand today, in the silence and cold of the mountains, far from the noise of the modern world—just as it was in the past. Each fragment of lapis lazuli tells the story of an ancient journey, that of the caravans that crossed the deserts to bring the sacred blue of Kokcha to the temples of Egypt or the palaces of Babylon.