Onyx is best known for its black color, but my collection also reveals pale bands, brown tones, and pockets of tiny crystals. If you've pictured it as a uniformly black gem, these pieces show its natural variation. In my Arizona studio, a converted garage, I use onyx both on its own and beside other stones.The video here shows many of the gems in my collection. Onyx … [Read more...]

A polished petrified palmwood gem can look like a tiny fossil garden, filled with dots, circles, and branching lines. Yet it isn't a gemstone crystal like ruby or diamond. It is ancient plant material whose original structure survived mineral replacement. For jewelry lovers and fossil collectors, petrified palmwood root offers two stories at once: the story of an old palm … [Read more...]