Martin Luther King Jr. in Sapphire

There are many ways to memorialize the immortal Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., the most famous and important civil rights leader of our time. Many, if not most, American cities have a street named after him. Scores of schools and buildings carry his name. Many parks and civic institutions have erected statues and monuments in his honor. But perhaps the world’s most unique sculptural tribute to the great civil rights crusader is Vasily Konovalenko’s Martin Luther King in Sapphire.

Soviet Prison Art

Over the span of about four decades, the late Russian artist Vasily Konovalenko (1929–1989) produced more than 70 wonderful gem-carving sculptures that depict themes and scenes of Russian folk life. Twenty Konovalenko sculptures are on permanent display at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science; another 20 sculptures are on permanent display at the State Gems Museum in Moscow.

One of Konovalenko’s most spectacular pieces is called “Prisoners,” in which two cold men use an ax and a saw to build a shelter at a Siberian labor camp. The snow-and-ice surface on which they work is a single slab of white quartz; the wood being sawed is actually petrified wood carved to look like milled lumber. Their uniforms are made of zebra jasper; their boots are obsidian.