As newlyweds, we embarked on a journey of collecting natural gemstones.

25 years later, we are still in love.

Fire, Survival, Resilience, Rebirth

A story of natural history, a story of natural gemstones, a story of rocks, our story.

Natural Gemstones are earth grown and exquisite.

We are Stephen and Tiffany Wolters. Our love of natural history led us to natural gemstones. What began with a parcel of unheated aquamarine became a decades-long journey of collecting, studying, and appreciating some of Earth's rarest treasures.

Over the years we built a private collection of natural gemstones, maritime artifacts, fossils, specimens, and natural history treasures. Then, in 2020, a lightning-caused wildfire changed everything. We lost our house and our yurt. Our private collection of natural gemstones survived.

Natural history was our passion when we discovered natural gemstones.

We had been stocking up to open a natural history store. This picture shows some of Stephens collection of Japanese glass floats. A love we learned from his grandmother. Her father was a commercial fisherman along the Oregon coastline. She said:

“He would catch them in the sea and bring them home to me.”

Stephen had a book of authentic glass floats. When he met the author he had it signed. It contained all of the worlds floats, companies, trademarks, countries, sizes, colors, and years they were made. It was signed by the author. We highlighted every mark in the book that correlated to a float we owned.

One day, while I was making sea glass jewelry in the yurt, Stephen told me how sea glass came to be. Then I wrote this poem.

I created jewelry in my yurt before it was burned down in a wildfire caused by lightning during the pandemic.

A Sea Glass Life

Long ago “Sake” was known by its glass

bottles of blue - hues from the past

Then melted, reborn into Japanese floats

to hold up the nets on the fishing boats

Loose and adrift they floated the seas

then waves broke them up - some smaller than peas

As we walked on the shore - looking for treasure

tiny pieces of joy were found beyond measure

Other glass too had made it to shore

all different colors and shapes to adore

Now made to be worn it's catching the light

a piece of jewelry with a new life in sight...

I would collect and make sea glass jewelry before the fire burned down my stock.
We would search for these black abalone shells on the beaches nearby. This was the most stunning abalone shell I ever found. Lost it in the wildfire caused by lightning that took our house.
This was the wild turkeys we loved. Spent 10 years watching them grow. They survived the fire that took our house.
This was our deck and the wood patio furniture our neighbor made us 2 weeks before the fire took it.

This antique iron trident was recovered with a melted glob of Japanese glass float stuck to it. All of the antique iron lived, all of the glass died. We packed crates of rocks from the yard: petrified wood, dinosaur bone, Sodalite, Mariposite and old stock picture stone that was in the shed. Such a strange thing to do when you need to decide what to keep and what to leave for the FEMA “scrape”. We were evacuated for 3 wildfires in 12 years. Now these rocks, after having lived through the fire, are finding new life. Stephen is cutting and polishing them into unique and one-of-a-kind pendants and specimens. Like a phoenix rising…

Our Survivor Collection is coming soon…

This is our Japanese Glass Float collection that melted during the fire and was stuck in our antique iron trident.