My name is Christopher Culver Green

I create Jewelry facing the austere Catalina Mountains from my shop / store on corner of Skyline and Campbell in my home town, Tucson Arizona. Each year the Gem and Mineral show allows me to draw on natural resources, animate and inanimate, from all over the world.

Reflecting, seeking answers is my compulsion.

Family lore has it, my questions, blue sky and such, kept my father awake on those long drives of my childhood. My best friend once jocularly suggested I was too deep to be socially acceptable. My college years were spent in Philosophy and Literature classes with all the reading, cogitating, discussing and writing involved. There could have been some socializing and shooting pool.

School out, confronted with the need to support myself during the Nixon Recession, I turned to woodworking, an affinity I discovered in high school shop classes. Having followed my Architect father around, I was familiar with the terrain. Traveling with the weather back and forth, Arizona to Idaho, I built cabinets and carpentered.

1974 serendipitously introduced me to the Picture Jaspers of Oregon and Idaho, which in turn led me to the world of gems and jewelry making. Never picking up a tool that did not fit well in my hand, back relieved of heavy lifting, I embraced the Jeweler’s one inch world. A year later an assemblage of 30 were making jasper jewelry for about 80 stores throughout the country.

The Shinny Object Conundrum

Astonishment with the human fascination with the bright and shiny played in the back of my mind over my years with jewelry– Bedeviled by the art and science of the one inch world, lofty pursuits, and the Poet’s eye– I could no more live at Walden Pond without knowing how deep, than be a Jeweler without sorting out the Shinny Object Conundrum.

The Epiphany!

Metal, gems and craft gain prestige as they come together in “Visual Poetry” of reflections and vivid hues, textures and patterns. Written in rare elemental earth treasures, jewelry becomes talisman, amulet, miniature celebration, commemoration, consecration, canonization of milestone moments of life. Jewelry has the power to kindle and rekindle emotion. Jewelry becomes a safe harbor for sentiment. Jewelry Art is an Alchemy that can transform spirit to object and back again.

My years have given me craftsman’s hands, artist’s eyes, and knowledge of the art of value. The Grail is this Alchemy when creating Jewelry. Consider entrusting the creation of your Jewelry  to me,  I promise you Jewelry that has the potential to pass down through generations rather than into the melting pot and recycle bin.

 

 

Visit and peruse my Posts page, metaphorical musings on value, worth, precious things, knowledge….. after  40 years designing, creating, repairing and appraising gold, platinum, palladium, silver, diamond, and colored gem jewelry while contemplating flights of interest during and following readings in Philosophy, Literature, Current Events,  I  began posting them, they are written as life unfolds around me.