Every stone has a story.

I grew up in Hubei, China, where some of my happiest childhood memories were spent picking up stones along mountain paths and riverbeds.

Even then, I loved turning each one over and wondering why no two were ever the same. Years later, life took me from China to Canada and eventually to the United States, but I kept returning to the turquoise of Zhushan, Hubei—one of China's best-known turquoise-producing regions.

Today, I personally select every stone Oakwell offers. I look for natural character rather than artificial perfection: color with presence, an expressive matrix, a strong shape, or a surface that suggests the piece it could become.

I believe trust matters as much as beauty. When laboratory documentation exists, I provide it. When it does not, I describe the stone from the information available to me and clearly state the limits of that knowledge.

Oakwell Turquoise was created to connect this material with collectors, custom jewelers, studio silversmiths, and designers who value a stone in its individual form. Every cabochon is photographed and described separately before it leaves my New Jersey studio.