Matt & Lauren Tuggle
"We are jewelers and hand engravers. Well, more specifically, Matt is the jeweler and we're both hand engravers. He actually found his start in high school," said Lauren Tuggle.
"Yeah, I was lucky to have a cool jewelry program in high school. We were fortunate to learn just a bunch of different techniques, we have a class where you would pick a different technique like enameling, piercing, or just some type of technique, and then you would kind of study that technique. Then you would teach the rest of that class that technique. So you got to learn a lot of different, you know, avenues of jewelry," said Matt Tuggle.
"And when Matt and I first met, he was super excited to show me these two woven chains that he had made in high school. Immediately it was obvious that he had a knack for this. That was the true talent behind these pieces. I asked him I was like, why aren't you doing this and then two weeks later, he had his first job working at Sears watching jewelry. That pretty much just started our entire path into the company that we have together today," said Lauren.
Matt and Lauren have been crafting beautiful pieces of jewelry in their home state of Colorado. They have built a huge community of clientele that enjoy their style of showcasing an emotional connection through their custom pieces.
Rings are probably one of the things we do most, we do a lot of custom bridal. So a lot of wedding rings. But we do a fair amount of pendants and earrings. We like doing pendants because you have this, you know, depending on the piece, really nice scale. So you might have more areas to work, more canvas to work with. But sometimes the challenge of a smaller piece like a ring and being able to fit everything in detail wise that a client might want or that we have in our vision is a fun challenge. Like Matt often refers to things as a puzzle that he has to put together, you know, you have all these different parts and pieces, and you have to figure out how it all works," said Lauren.
The process behind their Big Reveal piece was lengthy and challenging but setting the stone seemed fairly easy due to the experience and skills Matt obtained over the years.
"I definitely the end of the day, when my eyes are really tired or you know, definitely set bigger stones like that first thing in the morning when I'm nice and fresh. You know, feeling refreshed from the previous day or whatever. I said a lot of colored stones or a lot more sensitive stones internally. So I mean, for me tourmalines are a pretty hard stone. I set a lot of gem-quality Rhodochrosite. And I mean, they compare that to chalk. I mean, that's about how hard that stone is. So even trying to make a setting for a sound like that and not scratch it because you can't really steam it, you can't put it in the ultrasonic you can't really do any of that stuff. It has to you know, be very, very careful with stuff like that. So I would say in my younger years and making jewelry, the setting was very stressful. But I've taken a lot of classes and I would say now it's more just kind of second nature to me. So it's like I know if I can get that piece made and all my dimensions are right, then I know I can set the stones in there. So yeah, I would say that's not quite as stressful for me anymore. It was when I was younger, my career. But now it's more just like trying to get all these. I mean, I can't think I counted. It was like 37 different little components made up our pendant for the main piece. It was like 37 pieces, and it's the size of my pointer finger.," said Matt.
Tune in to hear more about Matt and Lauren's journey.
To see the Tuggle’s final piece follow the Makers of the USA on Instagram and Facebook and Maine Mineral & Gem Museum on Instagram and Facebook as well as the images will be posted on both of those social media platforms.