Every custom piece I pour starts with the same conversation: which stones? The silver is the constant - hand-poured 925 sterling, cast and finished in my Denver studio - but the inlay is where a pendant becomes yours. I hand-mix crushed opal and gemstone, flood it into the recessed channel, and lock it under a flat polished surface, so the stones you pick decide the color, the depth, and how the piece behaves under stage lights. Here's what my most-requested stones look like set in silver, the folklore that's followed them for centuries, and how I think about mixing them. The full color library lives in the stone catalog.
The stones, one at a time
Crushed opal
Crushed opal is the backbone of my inlay work. It doesn't read like a single stone - it reads like weather. Every fragment fires a different color as you turn the piece, so a channel of it shifts constantly on your chest. I keep thirty-five crushed opal colours on the bench, from the pale wash of Fire and Snow through Cotton Candy and Rose Quartz to the ones that earn their keep at a late-night set - Dark Matter, Black Fire, Cosmic Dust. Opal has long been counted a luck stone; Roman writers prized it above other gems because it seems to carry all their colors at once.
Black tourmaline
Black tourmaline pours in matte, charcoal-dark, with a faint mineral sheen. It has long been carried as a guard stone - folklore across a lot of traditions treats it as a shield, something you keep at the door or in a pocket. In silver it gives me the hardest contrast on the bench: a black field inside a bright polished border. Cut it with fine crushed opal and you get a night sky, like the black tourmaline and fine crushed opal Sphere pendant.
Turquoise
Turquoise owns the deepest history in silverwork of anything I stock - sky-and-water color that has been set in silver for centuries, long associated with protection on the road. Fitting for anybody who logs highway miles between shows. I carry natural, blue, purple, and mosaic varieties; the natural turquoise Sphere pendant shows how much matrix and character one solid field of it can hold.
Lapis lazuli
Lapis lazuli is deep ultramarine flecked with pyrite. This is the stone that got ground into the blue paint of Renaissance masters, and it's long been associated with truth and clear thinking. In an inlay those gold flecks catch the same light as the surrounding silver, so the whole piece reads as one thing - see the blue lapis and crushed opal Sphere pendant.
Malachite
Malachite comes banded - rings of light and dark green like tree growth. Folklore has long tied it to change and to warding off trouble. In a channel it behaves like a landscape, and no two pours band the same way.
Hackmanite
Hackmanite is the party trick of the case. It comes out of the bag a soft violet-grey, and it's tenebrescent - leave a piece in direct sun and it darkens, bring it back inside and it fades to where it started, over and over. Nothing else on the bench does that. I reach for it when someone wants a stone that behaves differently on a festival lot at 2pm than it does in a bar at midnight.
The supporting cast
A few more I keep at the bench: peridot, a bright spring green the ancient Egyptians called the gem of the sun; amethyst, long associated with a calm, clear head; tiger's eye, gold-brown bands with a moving sheen, an old courage stone; fluorite, the mineral fluorescence is literally named after; and ruby, an ember red that travelers once carried for safe passage. All of them are in the catalog with carnelian, selenite, azurite, chrysocolla, and more.
Combining stones in a custom inlay
My rule of thumb: one hero, one supporting. Pick the stone that carries the meaning or the color you want, then a second that pushes contrast - light against dark, matte against fire. Black tourmaline under a dusting of opal. Lapis with white opal worked through it. Two or three stones is the sweet spot; past that, a mix reads as static - though if chaos is the point, a confetti pour of everything is a real option.
Texture matters as much as color. Fine crush settles into a smooth, almost enamel-like field; coarser crush keeps visible facets that flash. And because I mix and pour every channel by hand, the same two stones never land the same way twice - your piece is yours even if someone else picked the same combination. If you'd rather describe a vibe than a recipe, dealer's choice is always on the table: tell me the feeling, I'll build the mix.
If you're matching a piece to a scene, the Phish collection leans hard on opal-over-color - reds, blues, and glow. The bears, bolts, and skulls carry turquoise, deep reds, and black beautifully; a Dancing Bear I poured with pink opal inlay let one stone do all the work, and the pieces on the shelf right now take the same approach. The band pages work the same way: the Magic Beans marching bears run malachite through confetti pours, the Pretty Lights pendants pair quartz with crushed opal, the Dogs In A Pile paw print takes an opal inlay, and the Daily Bread toast pieces go black tourmaline under opal.
Getting it made
When you're ready, start a piece through the custom form - name your stones from the catalog or just describe what you're after. Made-to-order work runs 2–3 weeks; in-stock pieces ship in 3–5 business days.
Shipping is $10 flat via USPS Priority. All sales are final - and if a craftsmanship issue ever turns up, I make it right. Details on the shipping & returns page.