Chrysocolla Beaded Necklace with Sterling Silver Clasp & Extender

I grew up in the Southwestern part of the United States. At an early age I fell in love with the great outdoors and all it had to offer. I became fascinated with rocks and minerals. This probably comes in part from my mother’s side of the family. Who were all hard rock gold and silver miners. I started collecting specimens at an early age and am still adding to my collection to this day.

In the early seventies I started making and selling jewelry as a way of paying my way thru school. My part time job soon turned into a fulltime passion and career. So much for school; that was over thirty years ago, and I’ve never looked back. I feel like I’ve gotten a vast education over the years, but in a different field than I originally started out in.

I’ve been fortunate in the fact that everything I really love to do has come together to form what it is that I do. I love to travel and see different cultures, and make new friends. I love to fly and anything that goes up in the air. I became a private pilot at a very early age and it has allowed me to pilot small aircraft in many locations all over the world. This has allowed me to seek out and explore many remote areas that otherwise might take a very long time to get to, in a shorter amount of time. I’ve landed in a lot of places that know one to my knowledge had ever been before. I love rocks and minerals and all the things Mother Nature has provided us with. I truly enjoy creating pieces of wearable art from the different materials I find.

What sets us apart from most of the people I know in my industry is we do it all. We go directly to the mines, or deal directly with an agent for the miners. There are as few middle men in the process as possible. This allows us to control the quality of our rough materials and obtain the absolute best price. We design all of our jewelry in-house. Everything is manufactured by us all by hand. Everything for the most part is done from scratch. We use only the finest of raw materials and sheet silver. This is almost a lost art today but over the years we’ve stayed true to our course and make the majority of our designs using only simple hand tools and lapidary equipment. This allows us to provide an extremely high quality product and keep our prices reasonable. We don’t mass produce anything but focus more on quality and design. This allows us to provide things that can’t be found anywhere else.

I still work in many of the better known gemstones like opal, turquoise, lapis, amber, and coral. What we are known for is also brining materials to the market that have never been seen in jewelry designs or in most cases been seen at all. I love to share the stories of the how we found them and the route they had to travel to end up as a finished product.