Everyone's familiar with chromium as "chrome", that super shiny quintessence of what metal should be. Of course, what they're looking at is only a very thin electrolytically deposited layer and oftentimes it ain't even real chromium but aluminum (pshaw!!).

Real-to-the-core chromium is however a brittle metal, and costly besides, which explains why its beauty only goes skin deep in most cases. For our purposes though chromium's fragility doesn't matter one bit as it sits behind a thick, protective shield of acrylic and can fully appreciate its icy good looks.

Here we have the real McCoy in a chunk of ultra-pure chromium metal weighing over an ounce and embedded in a 2x2" (50x50mm) block of crystal clear Lucite acrylic.  Hand cast in the USA.