.png)
From the Earth to Adornment: The Natural Gemstones That Inspired My Love of Jewelry Design for The Quarry Shop
- Kelly
- Aug 12
- 6 min read
There is something almost impossible to comprehend about holding a natural gemstone in your hand and realizing that its story began long before ours.
Long before it was cut, polished, drilled, or transformed into jewelry, it was being created by nature—through minerals, heat, pressure, water, geological movement, and time. Sometimes an extraordinary amount of time.
My fascination with these beautiful stones is one of the reasons I began designing jewelry.
I have always been drawn to the colors and textures found in nature, but gemstones are different. Pick up a handful of natural stones and look closely. One may have an unexpected vein running through it. Another may feature color variations that look as though they were painted by hand. Labradorite can appear quiet and unassuming until you turn it toward the light and suddenly discover a brilliant flash of blue.
No two are quite the same.
As I began learning more about gemstones—their origins, how they are formed, their histories, and the symbolism cultures have associated with them for centuries—I became even more fascinated.
Today, when I design jewelry for The Quarry Shop, I often find that I don't begin with the jewelry at all.
I begin with the stone.
Labradorite: A Little Magic Hidden in the Light
Few gemstones capture my attention quite like labradorite.
At first glance, labradorite can appear gray, smoky, or almost understated. Move it beneath the light, however, and something remarkable happens. Brilliant flashes of blue, green, gold, and sometimes violet can suddenly appear beneath its surface.
This optical phenomenon is known as labradorescence.
It occurs because of the mineral's internal structure. Light enters the stone and interacts with its microscopic layers, producing beautiful flashes of color that seem to move as the stone does.
Perhaps that is what I love most about labradorite: you have to look a little closer.
A stone that initially appears subdued can hold an entirely different world inside.
Labradorite has also become associated with transformation, intuition, protection, and self-discovery in various spiritual traditions. Whether you are drawn to those traditional meanings or simply captivated by its extraordinary appearance, it is difficult to deny the mystery of this stone.
For a jewelry designer, every piece presents a new possibility because its color and flash can help determine what belongs beside it.
Sometimes nature has already made the first design decision for you.
Rain Flower Stone: When Nature Becomes the Artist
Rain Flower Stone is one of those materials that can make you stop and ask, How did nature do that?
Its intricate markings, soft color transitions, and sometimes almost painterly patterns can resemble tiny landscapes, flowers, clouds, or abstract works of art.
That individuality is precisely what makes natural stone so interesting to me.
When I work with a material like Rain Flower Stone, I don't want every bead to look identical. I want to see the variation. I want to find the particularly beautiful marking or unusual pattern and decide where it belongs within a piece of jewelry.
Those differences aren't imperfections.
They are fingerprints of nature.
Stones sold under descriptive trade names such as Rain Flower Stone can vary in their precise mineral composition and origin, making it important to know the source of the particular material. But perhaps that variation is also a reminder of why natural materials deserve to be appreciated individually rather than expected to be as uniform as something manufactured.
Jade: A Stone Treasured for Thousands of Years
Few stones have a human history as rich as jade.
What we commonly call jade primarily refers to two minerals: jadeite and nephrite. Both have been carved, polished, treasured, worn, and passed from generation to generation for centuries.
Jade has held profound cultural importance, particularly throughout China and other parts of Asia, as well as among Mesoamerican and other cultures worldwide.
Across different traditions, jade has been associated with qualities such as harmony, wisdom, protection, prosperity, longevity, and virtue.
But even without its symbolism, jade is simply beautiful.
Its colors can range far beyond the green most of us immediately imagine. Depending upon the type and mineral composition, jade can appear in shades of creamy white, lavender, yellow, gray, black, and varying tones of green.
There is also something wonderfully timeless about it.
When I incorporate jade into a design, I am very aware that I am working with a material people have valued for thousands of years. Jewelry styles may change, but our fascination with beautiful natural stones seems to endure.
Jasper: A Tiny Landscape Created by the Earth
Jasper may be one of nature's greatest abstract artists.
Look closely at different varieties, and you can find colors and patterns reminiscent of deserts, mountains, forests, shorelines, clouds, or sweeping landscapes.
Jasper is an opaque, microcrystalline variety of quartz, and its remarkable range of appearances comes largely from mineral impurities and other materials incorporated as the stone forms.
Those inclusions help create the reds, browns, yellows, greens, creams, blacks, and other colors that make jasper so distinctive.
Historically, jasper has been used for jewelry, carving, seals, decorative objects, and amulets. In modern crystal traditions, it is commonly associated with grounding, stability, strength, and connection to the earth.
For me, its appeal is also wonderfully visual.
Sometimes I can look at a single jasper bead and see what looks like an entire landscape contained within it.
How could a designer not be inspired by that?
Gold-Spun Howlite: Where Natural Beauty Meets Human Artistry
Howlite offers a different kind of beauty.
Naturally, it is typically white or pale, with distinctive gray, charcoal, or black veining. Those irregular lines give each piece wonderful character and make howlite immediately recognizable.
Howlite itself is a naturally occurring calcium borosilicate hydroxide mineral, first identified in the 19th century. Because it is porous, it can readily accept dyes and treatments, which is one reason shoppers may encounter howlite in many forms.
Gold-spun or gold-accented howlite brings another element into the story: the artisan's hand.
The natural stone provides the foundation—its shape, texture, veining, and individuality—while the gold detailing introduces something intentionally created by people.
I love that combination.
It represents something I find particularly meaningful about jewelry making: nature creates the material, and the artisan gives it another expression.
In modern gemstone traditions, howlite is often associated with patience, calm, awareness, and reflection. Whether someone connects with that symbolism or simply loves its striking appearance, it is a stone that can be both understated and remarkably elegant.
From Deep Within the Earth to the Jewelry We Wear
The journey doesn't end when a gemstone is discovered.
Before a natural stone ever reaches my worktable, it may have traveled through many hands.
Rough material must be responsibly extracted or collected, then examined, sorted, cut, shaped, polished, and sometimes drilled or otherwise prepared for jewelry making. Stones may be graded and selected for color, pattern, clarity, size, or other characteristics before eventually reaching designers and artisans.
And then another journey begins.
When gemstones arrive at my worktable, I can spend a surprising amount of time simply looking at them.
I may spread them out and begin experimenting. What happens if I place this stone beside a creamy freshwater pearl? Does sterling silver bring out its cooler tones? Would warm gold make a particular marking stand out? Does a vintage component give it character? Should the design be elaborate—or does this particular stone need almost nothing around it?
Sometimes my original idea works.
Sometimes the gemstones have another idea entirely.
And that is part of the joy of creating.
Perfectly Imperfect
One thing I wish more people understood about natural gemstones is that variation isn't necessarily a flaw.
It is part of their beauty.
Color differences, veining, inclusions, matrix, pattern variations, and subtle differences in shape can all be reminders that what you are holding came from nature rather than a factory designed to reproduce the same object thousands of times.
Of course, natural does not automatically mean rare, untreated, or valuable. Gemstones vary tremendously in availability, quality, treatments, origin, and value. Understanding what you are purchasing matters.
But when I look at a truly beautiful natural stone, perfection isn't what I'm searching for.
I'm looking for character.
I Still Begin With the Stone
One of my favorite parts of designing jewelry remains the very beginning.
Before the clasps. Before the wire. Before the pearls, spacers, chains, and finishing details.
There are simply the stones.
I look at their colors. I turn them toward the light. I notice their markings. I begin putting different materials beside them until something feels right.
Slowly, a design begins to emerge.
That process still fascinates me because I know I am only creating the final chapter of a story that began somewhere deep within the earth long before I ever held that gemstone in my hand.
Perhaps that is why natural gemstones continue to inspire so much of the jewelry I create for The Quarry Signature Collections.
Every piece begins with materials that already have a story.
My job is simply to listen to what they might become.
Because when it's made with meaning, it means more.
Thank you for taking this journey with me!
— Kelly, Founder & Designer, The Quarry Shop
Comments