About Art Cut Gems

Confidence and trust are crucial in buying gems and jewelry. That’s doubly true when it comes to on-line purchases. We want to earn both by offering superior products, services and ironclad guarantees. To assure clients of our solid background in gems and jewelry, here’s some brief background.

Art Cut Gems and Martin Designs are operated by Richard (Rick) Martin. His fascination with colored gems and jewelry started at a very young age when his father showed him a bag of colorful agate nodules he’d collected. Rick later learned to cut stones and in a few years began importing uncut Australian precious opals. He sold cut stones to jewelers to earn money to buy more and better rough, and that was the beginning of our present gem inventory.

Professional Training

These interests led naturally to formal colored stone training with the Gemological Institute of America. He has continued his gemological study on a daily basis since then.

Rick also took residence courses in goldsmithing, stone setting and jewelry repair at Alan Revere’s renowned Academy of Jewelry Arts in San Francisco. He has marketed his own stones and jewelry creations to a wide list of clients for the past 25+ years.

He has personal “hands-on” experience with nearly every jewelry-making and gem-cutting function: design, model-making, casting, soldering, hand-fabrication, gold alloying, polishing, stone-setting, cabochon cutting, faceting and stone carving, as well as field collecting and mining. His customers benefit greatly from this personal experience daily.

He’s a member of the American Opal Society and has written articles for its international newsletter. He also represented a major jewelry manufacturer in road sales of gems and jewelry throughout southern California.