Twenty-nine years ago, I made my first bracelet. I still wear it today.

I was twenty-nine myself that year. I remember exactly how it felt to hold those first stones in my hands. The weight, the coolness, the way the light moved through them. Twenty-nine years later, I still feel something when I begin with a new stone.

So much has changed in all those years. But the reason I do this has stayed exactly the same.

What I learned from the women before me

My love of gemstones came from home. My mother wore them every single day — she almost never took her bracelet off. As a child, I used to ask her why. She would smile and say, "Because it makes me feel put together, even on a Tuesday."

My mother lived to 96. My grandmother lived to 89. But what stayed with me was never their age. It was how they carried themselves. Properly dressed for an ordinary Wednesday. Hair done for a trip to the shops. Never letting a hard year turn into a hard decade.

One day my mother told me that the women in our family had worn gemstones for generations. Not only because they were beautiful, but because they were passed down — each piece carrying a little of the woman who wore it before.

I never forgot that. It became the foundation of everything I make.

Why I still choose every stone myself

In all that time, I could have made it easy on myself. Cheaper stones. Bigger batches. Faster, smoother, more. But that was never what this was about for me.

I still work exclusively with genuine, carefully selected natural gemstones. No imitation, no plastic pretending to be stone. A natural stone has something imitation never can: markings that occur only once, color that shifts with the light, a small irregularity that makes it yours and nobody else's.

It is also why no two pieces are ever quite the same. I stopped apologizing for that a long time ago. It is the best part.

The habit that got me through

I have been through some difficult years of my own. The kind that quietly take pieces of you — your confidence, your sense of who you are.

During that time, one small habit kept me steady: putting on my bracelet every morning. Not for any grand reason. It was two minutes that belonged only to me before the day asked anything of me, and I always walked out of the door feeling a little more like myself than when I woke up.

That is what I want to give you. Not a piece of jewelry that sits in a box waiting for an occasion that never quite comes, but something you reach for on an ordinary Tuesday because it makes the day feel a bit more yours.

Made by hand, one at a time

After all these years, I still finish every piece by hand, one at a time. It is slower. It is also the only way I know how to do it.

The women who wear these pieces deserve to know exactly what they are wearing, and who stood behind it.

My mother was right all along. And it is never too late to find that out for yourself. 🤍

— Clara