Rock & Mineral Collection: A Guide to Collecting Gemstones

I grew up with a mom who collected: Indigenous art, shells, carved objects. She had a lot of it, and I saw the joy that struck her when she found a really great piece or a really great artisan. She proudly displayed everything all over our house. So the joy of collecting was definitely encouraged.

But I also grew up moving around so much. Vancouver, Peru, South America, then different cities in North America. I never felt like I could collect anything except for maybe a couple of rocks here and there, a couple of shells. I ultimately have just a little sprinkling of pieces from the last 10 years, when I made a home in New York and felt like I could actually collect and keep things.

Rocks are something I've collected since I was a kid. And I love that they're not precious. I think the impulse to pick them up speaks to something human: wanting to be closer to nature, to touch the earth and take it with you.

I can't trace the first rock. The love of collecting feels like it came from the beginning of time. I can trace when I started collecting minerals seriously: 2019. What I have now in the collection is something I've chosen with a sculptor's point of view. I’m really interested in the forms nature makes, the anti-gravitational shapes, the things you wouldn't think happen naturally. I probably went too far… we now have something close to a small museum's worth.

According to my archive, the collection has over 1,080 pieces. That includes mineral specimens, stone carved boxes, little sculptures, unique pieces of copper, tourmalines still in their mother stone, small pieces of agate— the elements of raw gemstone jewelry, still held in their original form.

The collection is always growing, but I feel extremely satisfied with what we have. I'm now really looking for things that are quite special and unique, truly awe-inspiring pieces that will transport someone to the mine I'm working with.

It gets edited only through gifting, or through the community rock exchange where we exchange rocks with our community and people trade. So there's a revolving door of the smaller pieces, but the sculptural mineral specimens are in the permanent collection.

When it comes to the mineral collection, I'm not especially interested in sparkle and crystals and the aura of an object. I'm more interested in the mix of materials together. Some of my favorite specimens are ones that have four different types of material mixed into them, so they remind you of something else in an uncanny way. We have a crystal formation from Nasik, India that reminds me of a microchip from inside a computer. Another that looks like a snowball. I love contrasting textures and forms all in one specimen: a fan shape on a flat plaque, and then a ball shape alongside it. It's about finding something uncanny. That's what surprises me most.

I have an opal I got when I was eight or nine. A boulder opal from Australia, from a period in my life when I had seen a mine for the first time, made pen pals in Papua New Guinea and Fiji. That area of the Pacific was very formative for me. I kept this opal in a small jar with a shell from the same period of time, and it was the most magical, sparkly thing I had ever seen.

When I found it again twenty-something years later, it wasn't sparkly at all. I've seen so much remarkable opal in this career that I think my childhood eyes saw something I can no longer access, or maybe the stone really did fade. Australian opals don't typically behave that way, so it remains mysterious to me. But I'm so glad I still have it. It's my origin story with opals, which is WWAKE's signature stone. And it's a strange feeling to look at something physical that was so magical in your childhood and not see it anymore. I just really wonder who I am now and whether I'm different. I'd like to believe that naivety and belief in magic still exists in me somewhere.

Yes and no. I have a rock collection at home, mostly beach rocks, and I was very closeted about it for a while. I was embarrassed to tell anyone I had a non-precious rock collection as a jewelry designer.

I think a rock you pick up just feels good in your hand. And now that WWAKE has existed for as long as it has, I understand that that is purely the connection to any object, whether it's fine jewelry or an egalitarian beach rock that costs nothing. The work is really about that connection. These two collections used to feel more distant from each other, but the more I understand what WWAKE is about, the more I understand it's all the same thought process.

No. But it will find me one day. I'm not hunting. The thing about my rock collection is that each piece is really a moment of my life encapsulated in an object. Rather than being a collector searching for things, I'm archiving my life through this collection, through the feeling of being fascinated and in awe of nature.

That nature is capable of forms, colors, patterns beyond our wildest imaginations. And we have to remember that we are part of it. We come from the earth just as much as any of these minerals do.

I think the collection as a whole shows what my experience of nature has been thus far. And I hope it keeps me humble, especially now, in this time of AI and optimization and distance from where we come from. I just want to stay connected to the fact that we are not the ultimate creator. We are part of something greater. That's what I want it to say.