Welcome to The Little Lapidary

Welcome to The Little Lapidary.

This site started as a place to share and sell some of the cabochons, stones, and specimens that keep finding their way onto my workbench. It has already become something a little broader than that.

I enjoy cutting stones, collecting interesting material, learning where it came from, and figuring out why one piece behaves differently from another. I also enjoy passing that information along. That is why the site includes a growing Learning Center as well as the shop.

What You’ll Find Here

The shop will continue to feature turquoise cabochons, other hand-cut stones, select specimens, and lapidary material that I think is worth putting on the table. Some pieces are cut by me, some are carefully selected, and I try to include useful information about origin and treatment whenever it is known.

The Learning Center is where I am building practical guides on subjects such as turquoise, ultraviolet fluorescence, organic gem materials, optical phenomena, labradorite, cabochon making, and other topics that come up at the bench or at gem and mineral shows.

What the Blog Is For

This blog will be less formal than the Learning Center. I plan to use it for workshop projects, unusual material, buying trips and collection sales, show preparation, things that went right, things that did not, and the occasional rock that sends me down a geological rabbit hole.

In other words, this is not meant to be a polished corporate gem blog. It is a working lapidary’s notebook attached to a small shop.

If you have a question, suggestion, correction, or a subject you would like to see covered, use the Contact page and let me know.

Thanks for visiting The Little Lapidary.