When asked about his work, Stone O’Daugherty will often simply smile and shrug, saying with a sparkle in his eye, “I just love rocks… My love of gemology, mineralogy, and geology is first and foremost, and my jewelry reflects this — an aesthetic ode to the stones themselves.”

As a military kid, Stone spent most of his childhood moving from place to place. “I collected more rocks than I was allowed to keep, oftentimes even more than my hands and pockets could hold.” He explored his relationship with art early on, working with his father restoring antiques and carving wood, and later on in high school and college art classes. He was soon traveling the country to mine stones, and then carving and tumbling the specimens he found to make into jewelry. He studied jewelry making and developed the unique, cold-fusion techniques you see in his unique pieces today. “I like to refer to myself as a tailor with silver,” he says. “That seems to capture it best.”

Today, Stone resides on the Big Island of Hawai’i with his wife and child. He has a full-time workshop where he builds his pieces around unique and rare gems and minerals, as well as time-tested favorites, using no heat, no solder, and no glue. His work has been featured in the Lapidary Journal, the Tucson Museum of Art, and galleries throughout the U.S.