House of Vibe 水晶首饰

CARING FOR YOUR HEALING STONE PENDANT OR CARVING

Rock River Medicine Art

Each pendant is a totally unique one-of-a-kind healing stone from the Earth in the form of wearable art.

For thousands of years humankind has been shaping beautiful crystals and minerals for decoration, beauty, good luck, healing and/or for totemic energy and power. Natural materials were used to carry or display these gems and stones, and they were set with various metals to make necklaces, crowns, lapel pins, knife handles, etc. These pendants are set with authentic gemstones, never lab grown.

Wear your pendant to summon your own inner knowing, wisdom, and harmony with the Earth as she cares for you each season of life.

Care:

Keep the pendant out of submerged water as much as possible.

For the most part, stones are fairly durable (other than then get dropped on a ceramic tile or cement floor)! They generally don’t require much care, other than a gentle soap and water cleaning once and a while. However, what does require care is the gem accent stone (if there is one) in the piece! So, first, a little education and guidance…With the advent of technology, waterproof glue allows gemstones to be attached directly to the host stone.

No matter how refined the process, gluing gemstones has certain challenges. It requires a type of care that most people are not used to. As long as this is understood, there usually isn’t a problem. Gluing gems with cyanoacrylate (CA) glue allows for the gem to be more directly connected to the host materials but it asks you to ‘regard them with extra care’ (Like handling fine crystal, carvings or pottery), as well as understanding this kind of adhesion, moisture, temperature change and other agents may act on the glue and weaken its cohesive ability. 

To minimize this, see if you can keep your pendant from being submerged in salt, river or bath water as much as possible. An occasional shower here or there is fine. By doing this, the bond should last for a long, long time. 

About the Artist:

Like most rockhounds, I’ve been collecting stones since I was a kid. I was fascinated by the variety, depth and beauty of the various components, and how rocks were composed of minerals, which were composed of elements, which were the basic building blocks of all of matter, including human bodies! I was amazed that there were just a few crystalline structures or families (e.g. trigonal, hexagonal, etc.) that encompassed all the crystalline formations found within the universe. This fascination grew into a deeper understanding of how the earth was formed, the relationship between the various ways (volcanic, metamorphic, etc.) and how crystals were like the “flowers” of the mineral kingdom.

This fascination continued to grow into adulthood where, eventually, I came to own and operate four new age crystal bookstores in New England. This gave me the opportunity to buy crystals and minerals at the Tucson Gem & Mineral show as well as to attend other regional rock and mineral shows in New England. I loved how beautiful gems and minerals could possess healing qualities and energies along with being a piece of wearable art. In time, I wanted to make the beauty and healing qualities and more accessible, so I began to have crystal pendants made by a local jeweler. Around the same time, an Anishinabbe elder, Hollis Littlecreek, taught me how to carve pipestone sacred medicine pipes, which was my first experience with shaping stone (red catlinite). This experience taught me how to listen for the “medicinal properties” of every stone, especially as it pertained to the person for whom I was carving.

In 2010 I began carving harder materials (quartzite, agate, serpentine, chrysoprase, feldspar, etc.), utilizing stones I found in nearby rivers and in the southwest. I quickly learned that mother nature was the first shaper and polisher, which led me to observe and attune more closely to the temperament of the stone. I start preliminary cutting until the energy and actual shape became clear (a journey that’s full of surprises!). 

As I learned how to work different minerals, I then began adding accent gems to beautify, extend and broaden the foundational healing qualities of each piece. For that reason, I only use real, authenticated gemstones in all of my work, not lab grown or synthetics. While synthetics have their place, I noticed I preferred to tap into the natural energy of the real gem or mineral, especially in light of the amount of time that is involved.  

Finally, there's the finishing process, wherein I like to leave a little of the raw stone present (not polished to oblivion like most imported specimens). In this regard, in order to honor the energy of the stone, I shape, sand and polish every piece by hand. This helps to bring out the uniqueness of every piece as well as provide a certain degree of individuality. This is why most of these creations take several hours to make, so that each one is a unique expression of the minerals and gems used.

I truly hope you enjoy the beauty and healing benefit of this piece for years to come!

Jeremy Youst, Rock River Medicine Art