About Me

I've been making jewelry since 2010, but the path here wasn't a straight line. I trained as a biochemist, which explains more about my work than people expect. I'm drawn to how materials actually behave: how a stone forms, why it takes light the way it does, why one mineral catches fire in the sun and another goes quietly matte. That curiosity never left the lab. It just found a new bench.

I put myself through college working in a portrait studio and camera shop, selling macro photographs of flowers on the side. That's where I learned to see: get close enough to something ordinary and it stops looking ordinary. It's still how I choose every stone, and it's why the shop now carries fine art photography too.

By day I work in pharmaceutical quality assurance, and yes, it's as fun as it sounds. I spend my days making sure things are made right, documented, and traceable. It turns out that's excellent training for a jewelry bench. Every piece is measured, weighed, and made to a standard I'd sign off on. It's also why I can tell you exactly what's in your necklace. I run a QA consulting practice for biotech manufacturers, and I'm also exploring agritech, specifically aquaponics, because apparently one career and one hobby weren't enough.

I source materials the way good things get found: gem shows, Etsy sellers I've come to trust, and a local rock shop that always has something I didn't know I needed. I don't buy stones because they're flawless. I buy them because they're specific. A tiger's eye with an unusual band. A piece of coral that still shows its structure after millions of years. Raw amethyst that hasn't been polished into looking like everything else.

Then there's the other side of the shop. I'm a Gen X woman who grew up on mixtapes, latchkeys and sarcasm, and the tees and mugs say what the rest of us are thinking. If the jewelry is the quiet, beautiful half of me, the tees are the mouth.

Every piece of jewelry is hand-formed in my studio, start to finish. No two are alike, partly because the stones aren't, and partly because I'm not interested in making the same thing twice. When you order from me, you're not buying off a shelf. You're getting something I made with your story in mind. I treat every customer like family, because by the time we've worked on a piece together, you usually are.

If you don't see exactly what you're picturing, reach out. Custom work is some of my favorite work.

~Barb