Thank you for visiting us and for your interest in our work. We’ll do our best to keep things up to date, so that you can really get a feeling for what we’re up to. It will take awhile to flesh everything out, so be patient with us. Check the FAQ’s first if you have a question, then please contact us directly if you don’t see what you are looking for.
Hawk Phoenix learned to cut cabochons and do simple silver smithing from his grandmother after a back injury took him out of work for several months in the late 1980’s. He quickly caught on and surpassed his grandmothers abilities. He is a self-taught faceter with over 30 years of experience.
Around 1987 Hawk relocated to Minneapolis, MN where he connected with a small business that catered to independent hobbyist silver smiths. It was there that he got his own equipment and was then asked since he cut cabochons… did he facet too? Well, no…but it sounded interesting. The owner had a couple of old home built faceting machines and Hawk got one of them and started teaching himself to facet. Within a couple of years Hawk upgraded to a production faceting machine and opened his own shop cutting his own stones and doing stone work for local jewelers in downtown Minneapolis.
After a few years circumstances changed and Hawk went into computers in the early 1990’s but still kept cutting in his off time.
30+ years later he is still cutting with state of the art software to design gemstones and one of the most accurate faceting machines available today. He is still cutting cabochons and doing inlay work too.
Chell Phoenix went to trade school for jewelry at Minneapolis Technical Institute in the 1990’s and received a Jewelry Manufacturing & Repair certificate. She then moved out to the Bemidji area where she went to work as a bench jeweler for a custom jeweler in that town. She worked there for several years and eventually relocated and began working as a school teacher.
She met Hawk in the early 2000’s and they connected and got married. Fast forward to today and Chell and Hawk work together to design and make jewelry incorporating Hawk’s gems with silver and gold handmade jewelry in their mountain home in southern Colorado.
Phoenix Rising Gems, LLC is owned and operated by Chell and Hawk Phoenix.
We operate out of our ranch home located 20 miles from the nearest town in the foothills of the Rockies in Southern Colorado, USA.
Our home and business are completely off-grid and are powered solely by solar and propane. Internet is received via Starlink.
We can then make arrangements for further contact by phone or other method
Our house is the tiny dot in the center of the picture above. The white roof toward the left is either the barn or the loafing shed, where our cows can get out of the wind and where we store our winter hay.
