The Draw of the Mojave Desert or Why I Started Designing Jewelry
When you look at my etsy stores you see Mojave Stone jewelry . In the 1970's, my father and two brothers mined a stone in the Mojave Desert in the middle of nowhere California! Actually, the mine was somewhat but not very close to Desert Center. It had been a gold/silver mine before they staked their claim and began mining stone. My family lived in Missouri and the stone had to be trucked from the desert after strip mining it. I was married and away from home so I got to hear the stories of making a road, fighting off bees, surviving the heat, being careful of the critters and all the other 'Wild West' excitement. And I did not have to rough it! Dad was going to retire (some day) and make and sell the polished cabochons (a stone cut and polished usually with a flat back and a convex top) for jewelry. In the meantime, he had some distributors sell it, some metal smiths create pieces, and he trademarked it as 'Mojave Royal Blue' and 'Mojave ...