Alabaster is a fine-grained gypsum stone used for sculptures, canopic jars and lamp vessels since Ancient Egypt. Its warm translucency inspired centuries of skin description.

Like porcelain but warmer. Alabaster suggests both delicacy and solidity — skin that holds light rather than reflecting it. Associated with classical beauty and stillness.

Used extensively in Egyptian and Roman sculpture. Renaissance poets used "alabaster brow" as a standard of feminine beauty. Still appears in poetry as shorthand for luminous pale skin.