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Born and raised in Colorado, Randy has always been adept with his hands. He worked at repair and maintenance work of all kinds through the years, but his personal hobbies always involved exploring the creation all around us. He raised canaries, tropical fish and African violets, he studied the stars through telescopes and photographed everything around him. He designed
landscapes and cultivated gardens, made a few pieces of furniture, and
always, throughout everything else, was looking for beautiful rocks-
especially petrified wood.
He and his wife, Sandy, became more and more engrossed in the fun of tramping around open land and mountainsides looking for rocks. Their
collection at home became quite extensive and they realized they would have to start finding a way to do something with all these rocks. Eventually that led to Randy teaching himself the skills of the lapidary (someone who cuts and polishes precious stones). A short time after that he read an article in a magazine that demonstrated the technique of jewelry making known as wire wrapping. The outcome of that is the work he produces now.
Sandy felt there was a need for earrings to match the pendants Randy was making. She learned how to make earrings and does so exclusively for their business.
Their jewelry utilizes natural stones, 14k gold-filled and sterling silver metal, and lots of time and care. Many of the cabochons for the pendants are stones that Randy cut and polished himself. The resulting
combinations of precious stones and high quality metals are one-of-a-kind works of art.
Randy continually explored new methods of working with the stones that he found so fascinating. One example of this is intarsia, a method of fitting together several different types of stone into one unified piece without use of metal channels. He had two of his intarsia pendants place in national shows.
Randy died in December of 2010, so Sandy now continues their business in Luling, Texas using the skills and methods he taught her.
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