Adam Neeley’s Jewelry Designs Often Come in a Kind of Dream

A singed eyebrow or two did nothing to extinguish Mr. Neeley’s enthusiasm for jewellery. By age 14, he was taking part in artwork reveals throughout Colorado, together with one in Telluride, the place the actress Daryl Hannah purchased a bit from his first assortment.

It was round this time, within the late Nineties, when Mr. Neeley paid his first go to to the Tucson gem reveals and met Mr. Avery, the lapidary, a fellow Coloradan.

In Tucson early this 12 months, Mr. Avery reminisced with Mr. Neeley about that first encounter, when the younger rock hound bought an aquamarine. “I keep in mind your father was with you,” Mr. Avery recalled. “You picked the least costly piece that I had, but it surely was actually stunning, and naturally, you gravitated proper to it.”

Mr. Neeley’s appreciation for coloured stones — from the onerous stones of his Colorado youth to the pearls and superb faceted tourmalines, sapphires and rubies that distinguish his jewellery right this moment — solely deepened on the Gemological Institute of America, the place he earned a graduate gemologist diploma in 2003.

His real-world coaching, nonetheless, happened in Florence, Italy, the place he moved in 2004 to check design and superior jewellery methods at Le Arti Orafe, one in every of Europe’s prime goldsmithing establishments. In January 2005, Mr. Neeley started to apprentice underneath the grasp goldsmith Giò Carbone, the college’s founder. “Adam was an out-of-the-ordinary scholar, meticulous, curious, inventive,” Mr. Carbone wrote in an electronic mail.

Mr. Neeley mentioned that Mr. Carbone taught him to be painstaking about his ending methods. He additionally impressed him to think about custom-making his personal gold alloys. “Within the U.S., we normally purchase our alloys from a giant provider,” Mr. Neeley mentioned. “It’s pre-mixed yellow gold. They usually have perhaps one or two shades, however that’s about it. In Europe, they’re normally alloying themselves.”