It all began with some shiny rocks…
While on a fossicking trip through the central Queensland Gemfields region, I fell in love with the raw beauty of natural gemstones, straight out of the ground. The way the rugged crystals sparkled in the sunlight was captivating, having unearthed them after millions of years buried in the ground.
While standing in a hole, covered in dirt, dust, and sweat, I decided that I wanted to show these stones off in all their natural glory, and over the next couple of years, Stag Designs was born
Starting from humble begginings, I put together a dusty little workshop under our house, and began building up Stag Jewellery Designs piece by piece.
Everything I make, I carry the vision of showcasing the natural beauty of the rough, the raw, and the flawed. I believe that character lies within the imperfect.
When I began this journey, I had no real idea of how i wanted my works to look. All I knew was that I wanted them to feel organic, natural, and most of all, personal.
Without any formal training, I set to work to try and create pieces that resonated with me, in the hopes they would also resonate with you.
Through (a lot of) trial and error, I began to find my feet, and the vision started coming to life.
Over time, I succesfully built myself a small home studio, and a business based on the exact dreams I had while standing in a hole, in the middle of the bush, covered in dust and dirt, gazing into some glowing crystals in the sunshine.
Stag Designs is the story of a man following his dream and showing the world that beauty can come in many forms, shapes, and sizes.
Why Sapphires?
Casting stones in place isn’t exactly a straight forward process.
When casting, you’re essentially pouring molten metal on to, and around the gemstones. So you could imagine the stress that would put on them!
Only gems that are tough enough and hard enough are fit to survive the process, and even then, it’s never a guaranteed success. Sapphire sits at a hardness of 9 on the mohs scale, which is a unit of measurement that defines just how hardy a stone is.
Diamond (the hardest of stones) is the only thing above sapphire, sitting at 10.
Unfortunately for lovers of cast-in-place jewellery, that limits the stones used to sapphire, diamond, ruby - and occasionally if you’re lucky, topaz, spinel, and zircon
Luckily, sapphire comes in a wide variety of colours though! so there’s plenty of colour options available.
If you’re just after the aesthetic however, there are always lab grown, and man made replica gemstones we can use for cast-in-place jewellery.
