My Story

My name is John Shipp and I am a lapidary artist, silversmith and goldsmith.  My designs are simple. My goal is not to create pretentious art pieces but rather to design wearable pieces that celebrate the stone's natural beauty. I love to cut and polish a wide variety of stones including Opal, Larimar, Fossilized Coral, Ammolite, and Turquoise. My favorite stone to work with lately, is a unique type of jasper that comes from the bay area of California and is called Morgan Hill Poppy Jasper. I am a native Californian and I graduated from high school in Morgan Hill, a town just south of San Jose. Poppy Jasper is a rare orbicular Jasper that is difficult both to find and to cut. When cut, the gold or red orbs look like the poppies we see on the hills around the Bay Area every spring. I have done very well with my Poppy Jasper pieces and I feel that having a locally cut, local stone makes my jewelry desirable to shoppers here in the San Francisco Bay Area.

    I am the son of a mechanical engineer whose specialty was metallurgy and welding. Though I was born in California, my father's job took us overseas for 11 years of my childhood. I lived in Japan, Spain, and Switzerland. My parents were adventurous and our travels took us to Australia, Africa, Southeast Asia, India and Nepal. My mother loved to find a unique gemstone or piece of jewelry to buy as souvenirs, and her excitement in tracking down a beautiful aquamarine or opal was, I'm afraid, contagious. From my father I learned to weld, braze and solder. Our camping and fishing trips always included some time spent gold panning and rock hounding. I grew up and finished college with a psychology degree. I began making jewelry for a living many years ago and have sold to galleries across the country for over 20 years. I have no formal training in my craft but have learned most of my skills from old men I have known and who have become my mentors. With their wisdom and techniques and a lot of hours spent on my own, I have learned to make jewelry. I have sold my work to Yale’s Peabody Museum, Chicago’s Field Museum, Nordstroms, and galleries in Houston, New York, and San Francisco. I have done a wide variety of shows including the Tucson Gem Show, the Gilroy Garlic Festival, the Monterey Blues Festival, the Harvest Festivals, the LA Gift Show and a variety of art and wine and craft shows. 

I know that the jewelry section of most shows is heavily impacted and that it is difficult to choose which jewelers will be included. I feel that my use of local stones, makes my craft appealing and interesting to patrons in the San Francisco bay area. I also feel that my stone cutting and simple stone focused designs mean that I can sell alongside a variety of jewelers and bead artists harmoniously. I am cutting and setting some new stones including Fire Agate, Aquamarine, Sugilite, and a California stone called Benitoite. In addition to my own designs, I have been doing very well with commissioned pieces and repairs. My stone cutting ability allows me to custom cut stones to fit customer’s settings where stones have been lost or damaged. My metalsmithing abilities make it possible for me to make custom pieces. I do a lot of custom work recycling customers’ broken or unwanted gold and silver. Rising metal prices and a tough economy were hard on most neighborhood jewelry stores and many have gone out of business. Customers are looking for jewelers they can trust not only to buy from but who also can make custom pieces and do repairs. I have been doing well at shows and my business increases each year as I earn my customers’ trust. Last year I began doing more pieces in gold and found that my average sale and overall sales went up. This year I am doing more gold work with pieces ranging in price from $90 to $2000.