Detroit agate, also known as fordite, looks like a precious stone that has formed in the Earth’s crust over millions of years, but it’s actually a man-made material dating back only a few decades.
Looking very much like a natural agate, the sought after Detroit agate actually consists of layers upon layers of enamel paint from old car painting racks in Motor City factories. Trapped in these layers of paint are decades of automotive history and unique, vibrant colors that we may never see on cars again. For example, the earliest pieces of fordite mainly consist of blacks and browns, the most popular automotive colors of the time, others have gray primer layers between the colorful ones, and some have shiny flakes of metallic paint. Because the hand-painting process has long been replaced by an automated one, Detroit agate is no longer produced, so the pieces that do exist are actually prized as actual jewels especially by automotive history buffs.
