Hi everyone! Thank you so much for visiting Geologic Spectrum!

 

We are Jon & Chrissy Schwing, the owners of this small, precision-faceting business in Colorado. We are both geologists who met in college at the University of Oklahoma while attending undergrad. Both of us were long-time lovers of minerals: their formation, composition, and structure. We saw the beauty in gemstones, but we were much more interested in the rocks they came from.

 

Our interest in gemstones began in winter of 2016 while Jon was looking at engagement rings; he stumbled across a few gem cutters on Instagram and was blown away by the stunning difference between those stones and the mass produced ones he was seeing in rings online. He fell deep into the rabbit hole researching the art of cutting gemstones and by March of 2017 we had a faceting machine in our spare room and a few ever-filling tackle boxes of eBay-sourced and self-collected rough. At the time it seemed like a crazy and expensive hobby to pick up since he was a full time Master's student studying the Colorado River for his thesis with the United States Geological Survey and Chrissy was working as a geologic technician. 

 

Jon, being a perfectionist with a strong attention to detail, was a natural at faceting. Completely self-taught, he would often spend hours researching and examining rough, then cutting each piece into the most beautiful stone possible. As his cutting skills and the boxes of rough to be cut grew exponentially, we realized that we should make this into a business that at the very least would pay for itself. Chrissy did all the behind the scenes work of branding, bookkeeping, and filing the paperwork to make us a legitimate business, and within 6 months we had sold our first stone and designed our first piece of jewelry (a custom wedding ring for Chrissy with 3 of Jon's stones).

 

We have both learned so much about the rough we buy, faceting, jewelry, and making this business work. Our goal has always been to not only provide beautiful stones, but to also tell their story. We always include information about each stone we cut as a way to not only put those Geology degrees to work, but to also tell each recipient of our pieces how their stone got from the earth to their hands. Providing you with the complete backstory of your piece is important to us because we know that our pieces might one day become treasured family heirlooms. We still work our 9-5 jobs and we love having this creative outlet to do on the side, but hopefully one day we can do Geologic Spectrum full time.