We just love to give stuff away here. Not sure why, I can admit that we like the spike in traffic, of course, but we also love knowing that somewhere out there, someone gets a huge rush from getting a free piece of art.

So- in that vein, we are going to run one contest (or more!) per month from this blog. This month’s contest is for a giveaway of this sterling silver chain band. The band is designed by us, of course. We’ve carried this design for about a decade, and it has sold well. It is appx 5mm wide at its widest point, nice and heavy in build for long wear. Suitable ...

This ring was born in our store this past month. It isn’t just a simple process of scraping a chunk of silver off a block and gluing a gemstone down inside. It takes just a bit more work (and equipment!) than that…

Here you can observe- in painstaking detail- the conception, gestation, and final delivery of a custom designed ring from Wexford Jewelers.

It all begins with a wax model. This is extruded sheet wax that has been bent into the primary form, cut to shape, cut to size, and ...

There is something about a rose- perfectly furled silken petals, graceful tiny rosebuds waiting to open, and an almost fractal symmetry- nearly everyone loves roses. They come in so many varieties of color and shape and bloom, and they can even have health benefits!

We at Wexford Jewelers decided to celebrate the natural beauty of these blossoms by creating an entire line of rose jewelry. It has been selling quite well in our store and online for about a year now, and we would like to introduce you to some of the elements of this line: Pictured below: Our first fitted rose wedding set.< ...

If you’re an Ellis Peters fan, you know the book. If you’re a music fan, you know the song. ‘Black is the Color of My True Love’s Heart’

Black is back, and blackened metal is making a huge comeback in the jewelry world. Through an ancient process formerly unknown to us, we’ve managed to blacken our silver, and we are starting a line of darkened silver pieces.

This month, we’re offering this ring- free!- to one lucky person. All you have to do is leave a comment on this blog post, and- once it passes the moderator for languag ...

Part I of this series here.

Part II of this series here.

For more photos of this process, visit our flickr photostream!

Quick review- here’s what we started with:

And here’s what we’re going for:

How we get from point A to point B has been detailed fo ...

I’ll always remember my first time at the wheel. I was a short, scrawny, 9 year old girl with straggly, brown hair. I did not know what I was doing.

Zzz… zzz…zzz, went the hard, abrasive wheel, as I gouged deep, rough valleys into the thin, silver, practice ring, that was just cast and cleaned. Trying to take down the casting sprue. Then the ring slipped off the wheel and my finger received the same treatment. Zzz… into my soft, not yet calloused finger tip. I received a little instruction from my teacher, my dad. He showed me how to firmly but gently, roll the ring into the wheel to keep the nice ...

Gold at nearly a thousand US dollars an ounce. Platinum over two thousand. Silver, incredibly enough, at twenty dollars an ounce.

Did we honestly think we would see these prices this early on?

The falling value of the dollar coupled with instability in the markets has set this industry on its ear. Then we add low mine production to the mixture, and suddenly a reachable commodity becomes just one more thing that’s harder for the common man to acquire. We’ve had a spike like this before, but not with such a steady upward trend. Is it going to stay this way? Who knows. I, for one, think it will.

Rather than bemoan the price- which I can do nothing about- I want to address the situation ...

Child Labor laws notwithstanding, my dad made us all work in the shop from a very early age. Sometimes it was good fun- learning to melt the wax and playing with tiny Austrian Crystals were things any child would enjoy. Other times it was not so fun, but we survived.

My right ring finger, however, almost didn’t.

The year was 1991. I was thirteen, in my first semester of full homeschooling, and my dad had found a great advantage to his daughters not being away at school for 7 hours a day: he could have us help out in the store nearly full time.

I would come to work with him in the morning, my hair up in a banana comb most days. We would park in back of the little strip mall on Speedway Boulevard in ...

Having apprenticed under a half-crazed master jeweler, I have grown to be closed minded towards new ideas. Wait. Let me rephrase that. I have learned to be closed minded towards any good idea that anyone but myself has come up with. So having said that, let me begin.

Centrifugal casting was THE way and the ONLY way to cast precious metal. It took me some time to learn, but after a year, I believe I had acquired the skill to complete a successful casting. All the while, there was still a small spark in the back of my mind telling me that there were other- possibly more efficient- ways of doing things.

“JASON! Go heat up the car! i want to look at 800 acres not too far from here, where we can build our ...