Out-of-this-World and Creative Gifts for the Person Who Has Everything

 

With the relative ease of global travel and international shipping these days, finding a holiday gift that will really surprise the proverbial man or woman “who has everything” is a challenge. Where can one find a truly unique, exotic, or otherwise jaw-dropping present? For a start, try expanding the search to include other planets.

Through November 10th, Christie’s Travel, Science and Natural History department is presenting “Deep Impact: Martian, Lunar and other Rare Meteorites,” an online auction featuring exceptional specimens from the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere in our solar system. Instead of a sculptor’s tools, these objects were chiseled into shape by the extreme temperatures of our own atmosphere just before they crashed to Earth. For anyone fascinated by space, geology, and even gemstones, the otherworldly objects in “Deep Impact” are sure to elicit a sense of awe.

According to James Hyslop, a Scientific Specialist at Christie’s, many collectors display meteorites as though they were works of art or Chinese Scholar’s’ Stones from the Qing dynasty, setting them on exquisite stands under gallery-style lighting to show off every one of their unique aspects. One particularly eye-catching example is Lot No. 4, a dark-reddish Gibeon meteorite of perfect proportions. A roughly rectangular form that appears to lean back on its heels and sports a hole positioned almost like an animal’s eye, it could easily sneak its way into the 20th-century sculpture court of a major museum. “Honest to God, it looks just like a Barbara Hepworth or a Henry Moore,” Hyslop says of the iron meteorite, which happens to be one of his personal favorites. “At every angle, it looks stunning.”

As if the formal qualities of these meteorites weren’t enough, their provenance is truly awe inspiring. Most iron meteorites, including the sculptural Gibeon specimen, come from asteroids that orbited Mars or Jupiter not millions, but billions of years ago. They may look to us like art, but they predate both our existence and the very concept of art by a dizzying timespan. “It’s actually quite a moving experience when you’re holding a piece of the planet Mars or the Moon in the palm of your hand,” says Hyslop, who has examined a great many other-worldly specimens over the course of his career. “You get a connection to these astronomical bodies in a way that you don’t when you’re just looking at photographs or reading about them in textbooks.”

Not all meteorites look as though they were forged in iron; some glint in the light like jewels, and that’s because they actually contain gemstones. An example of this is Lot No. 2, a large slice of Imilac meteorite. The translucent, amber-colored elements in this specimen are crystals of olivine as well as peridot, August’s birthstone, the familiar semi-precious stone that’s actually composed of gem-quality olivine crystals.

Still others have fascinating historical value, such as Lot No. 37, a fragment of the L’Aigle meteorite that fell to Earth on April 26, 1803, in Normandy, France. At a crucial moment in the history of science, the L’Aigle meteorite helped scientists confirm that the mysterious “unearthly stones” being found in various parts of the world were actually coming from space—a theory that was hotly contested at the time. French scientist Jean-Baptiste Biot visited the landing site in Normandy, consulted with several eyewitnesses, and presented his findings to the French Academy of Sciences, ultimately paving the way for major advances in astronomy.

And for the collector who has everything? “I’d suggest you buy one of the Martian meteorites,” Hyslop says. “In a sense you get two meteorites for the price of one: several millions of years ago, a meteorite hits Mars at an oblique angle and with enough velocity that it knocks pieces of that planet out into space. Those comets travel around the solar system until chance has it they land here on Earth. There are two massive cosmic coincidences that have to happen for that piece of rock to be transported from the Planet Mars to us here on Earth.” Out of this world, indeed.