This year’s honorees include a Midwest retailer and two multi-store independents, one in New York and the other in New England.
20 Cutters Collaborated to Make This Gemstone Baby Mobile
What started out as a gift for a granddaughter turned into an epic project with an aspect of giving back.


The next thing she knew, cutters she hadn’t even asked were reaching out, asking to be a part of the project.
A total 20 cutters were involved in the project: Victor Tuzlukov, John Dyer, John Bradshaw, John Burleyson, Jeff Hapeman, Craig Oliveira, Nolan Sponsler, Dalan Hargrave, Alina Drobovich, Laura Phillis, Tom Munsteiner, Nick Alexander, Darryl Alexander, Ryan Anderson, Derek Katzenbach, Jeffrey Hunt, Kell Hymer, Wild & Petsch, Austin Burleyson and Bridges Tsavorite.
Overall, the group used seven different types of material: quartz, olivine (peridot), danburite, spinel, tsavorite garnet, pearls, and beryl (aquamarine).
Though each cutter wasn’t aware of what the others were doing, five alone ended up using ametrine (a quartz).
Katzenbach was one of them. He said he chose the stone because it’s one of his favorite gems to cut, due to its mix of colors and how they look in fantasy- or ultra unique-cut gemstones.
“Although this project was a mobile for a baby, the longer-term purpose of passing these gemstones on to Shelly’s grandchild gave me an opportunity to create a gemstone with a significant meaning,” he said.
Nolan Sponsler, meanwhile, created a 65-carat amethyst with an elephant carving, perfectly matching the animal theme of baby Jenova’s nursery—though he didn’t know it at the time.
He also created the wooden box to hold the mobile’s music player housed at the top, which plays “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”
The mobile ended up featuring about 30 floating gems.
“As far as anyone knows, we can’t find a larger collaboration of gemstone cutters in one project,” Sergent said, insofar as the identity of each specific cutter is known.
Most of the gems had been cut by late December 2018—just a couple weeks after Jenova was born—so it was during the Christmas holiday that Sergent showed her daughter the stones.
Some of the cutters wrote notes or cards for the baby, but none took money for the pieces.
“I thought to myself, I’ve got this money that’s just sitting here. I can’t keep it; that’s not the right thing to do. I have to do something with it.”
So, she circled back to the group of cutters and let them decide where the money would go.
The idea they came up with benefitted both one of their own as well as a generation of new cutters: donating the money to Hargrave to go toward the lapidary arts classes he offers in Texas.
“To many of these younger students, it can make a substantial difference to receive the training we offer,” he said. “To date we’ve offered discounted tuition to at least a dozen students, many of whom had some kind of hardship, and they were elated to receive assistance.
“Education is the key to preserving and advancing the lapidary arts, and we were blessed to be the recipient of Shelly’s generous contribution.”
The project has been named “Grace,” after Jenova’s middle name.
Sergent and her family aren’t keeping the mobile to themselves. It will make its debut in Tucson next month, on display at Somewhere in the Rainbow’s AGTA GemFair Booth 1950 all week.
“I think it really lends itself to the story of how connected our industry really is,” she said.
“We’ve really become, I think, an industry where collaborations are much more common and much more welcomed, and on this level, it goes on to verify for people that it’s OK to work together. Look what happens when people come together.”
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