Rare and Precious.com - My Lapidary Hobby

I spent 20 years in the jewellery trade during which time I was involved in virtually all aspects of that business. I designed, imported, exported, wholesaled and retailed everything from hippie silver to large diamonds. I left that business in the early '90s to pursue a new career but the love of gems was in my blood. What I enjoyed the most of my jewellery experience was cutting gemstones. Over the years in the business I had collected a considerable amount of gem rough which started to call out to me from various boxes in my basement . One of the great things about stone is that it doesn't go bad over time. If you put a piece of rock in a box in your basement and stumbled across it 10,000 years later, it would look exactly the same. You on the other hand wouldn't look so good.

Anyway, a couple of years ago, I built a workshop in my basement to rekindle my love of stone as a hobby. I also set up a website, with the help of my friend Michael Drechsler which you can see at: http://www.rareandprecious.com/