JOURNAL

Chrysoprase is a variant of Chalcedony, or cryptocrystalline quartz, which means it is made up of microscopically fine crystals. Trace amounts of nickel cause its signature green color, and in the rough it typically appears in colorful veins sandwiched by iron and magnesite-rich host rock. Rough Tanzanian Chrysoprase from the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show Chrysoprase has been used for adornment as far back as 400 BC, and is currently found in deposits all over the world. The most famous material is from the Marlborough mine in Australia, but I’m partial to the bluer, creamier variants found in Brazil, as well as the deep gemmy blue-green material found in Tanzania. In Christian lapidaries of the Medieval era, chrysoprasus symbolized those...

I just returned from a quick trip to Arizona for the annual Gem and Mineral show. Each year, thousands of jewelers, collectors, and rockhounds alight on the city of Tucson in search of the new. It’s a bit ironic, considering the material in question is hundreds of millions of years old, that we show up hunting for novelty each year. Sometimes the newness is true - someone found a previously untapped mining deposit, or unearthed a cache of hard-to-find material from a collector’s archive. But the newness is mostly internal: each year I return to Tucson with fresh eyes, not because earth’s offerings have changed much, but excited to see how a year of life, of making, of new creative preoccupations, has...

Click through to read about the inspiration and process behind one of my newer styles, the Aura Hoop earring.

A selection of photos in blooming pinks, shot by Hannah Lewis-Lopes.

An editorial inspired by soft light & disco nights