This is Botas...a local Lapidary who comes around unschedueled offering his stones every few weeks so if your in the right place at the right moment you could strike gold with his talent.
He walks the hills with a limp, cane and friendly smile carrying bags of Gems in his pockets whose shapes and facets are aesthetically mishapen and beautiful by nature. Familiar gemstones often include, Onyx, Obsidian, Pyrite, Amethyst, Mother of Pearl, and the odd Abalone, you just never know what’s going to show up.
I often chip away at some kind of rough mineral specifically the Lava Rock and Pyrite you see in the Collection, shaping stones is an art of it’s own, and one that I hope to learn more of, for now I get a little help from my friends, apart from incorporating his own lapidary work Botas also helps me fit specific stones into their settings...if the stone breaks in a #oneofakind setting the only way to replace it is if you shape your own!
The best part of the stone selection are the ideas, they charge and there’s this infinite stream of possibilities ironically filed away. I select the stones before any design and they often stay with me for years until the moment is right and they’ve found their forever home in a handmade setting and then their person, that’s when the real magic begins.
