Biography

AJ had been fascinated by the life and fire of cut gemstones all his life, but never knew where or how to acquire the skill himself. That changed in October of 2021, when a class at Patuxent Lapidary Guild gave him the chance to learn. After that, it was an obsessive dive to learn everything he could about the art; he had a machine of his own in under six months.

A materials engineer by training and a historical reenactor by hobby, AJ is equally interested in the cutting edge of modern faceting techniques and the medieval origins of gemcutting. He has a particular fondness for novel synthetics that have been pushed to the optical limits and misusing those properties for artistic purposes.