Behind the bench: process notes, stone stories and the making of each piece.
Oct 25, 2026
A bench journal on carving aquamarine: why hardness and transparency set the order of the cuts, and how two bears were read out of a single piece of beryl.
Before a carver chooses a subject, tourmaline chooses a direction — pleochroism makes orientation the first decision, and that is how one leopard came to prowl on its own raw base.
A fox asleep in one pebble of citrine: how the rough chose the curl, how diamond burrs cut fur into quartz, and why this sleeping shape could live in no other stone.
An emerald that would only accept one subject: eight arms read from a Nigerian rough, two of them coiled, the rest sweeping down to the surface the piece stands on.
How do you find an eagle inside a rough crystal? The story of a carved amethyst eagle whose polished plumage rises from quartz left as it came.
Oct 23, 2026
Why aquamarine is one of the most carvable precious stones, what sailors believed it could do, and how a woman's head with a rose at her shoulder was read from a single pebble.
