Fiery Flying Serpent

Marble Sculpture
by Dahrl Thomson

Italian Cippolino marble on Italian Verde marble
16″H, 11″W, 6″D

An unusual story surrounds this piece carved from Italian Cippolino marble (Cippolino means onion in Italian; this green/white marble looks as if it has many layers, as does an onion). I started out to carve an abstract sculpture, but the stone seemed to want to be something else. I kept thinking of a story in the Bible that I had read recently in Leviticus, that had fiery flying serpents. In the footnote, it said that “fiery” pertained to “poisonous.” So I began to wonder in my mind what those serpents could have looked like.

Since my stone I was trying to carve into an abstract was being resistant, I decided to turn it into my version of a fiery flying serpent. Many people are not attracted to snakes, but I really like this one. He is a little mean-looking because he is meant to look that way, but of course he is utterly harmless, and the marble is beautiful. Also, he sits on a round Italian Verde marble base which turns.