A row of ban­gles clink along Rachel Ross' arm as she ges­tures. The jew­eller is com­fort­able and at ease, and the ef­fect is con­ta­gious. Her apart­ment, set against the stun­ning back­drop of the Cas­cade hills, is paint­ed in warm pur­ples and sun­ny yel­lows, giv­ing it the feel of a Mediter­ranean coastal vil­la. Its walls are adorned with gor­geous paint­ings, most of them done by friends. Bits and pieces of sculp­ture, ex­ot­ic jew­ellery and pot­tery hold the mem­o­ries of her trav­els. Every cor­ner of the home has been touched by some­one with an artis­tic eye and qui­et good taste. Born in Pe­nal, where her fa­ther worked for Neal and Massy, Ross and her fam­i­ly moved to Diego Mar­tin when she was about sev­en, but the fam­i­ly's roots are firm­ly in Port of Spain. She talks about spend­ing time with her grand­moth­er in Mar­li Street, and the ef­fect that the Sa­van­nah and its veg­e­ta­tion had on her ear­ly artis­tic sen­si­bil­i­ties.

It in­stilled in her an abid­ing love for nat­ur­al ma­te­ri­als: seeds, dried leaves, co­conut and bam­boo. "When I first start­ed mak­ing jew­ellery, I re­mem­ber my fa­ther climb­ing flam­boy­ant trees at six o'clock in the morn­ing," she laughs. "We had a good time to­geth­er." While Ross nev­er for­mal­ly stud­ied jew­ellery abroad, she ap­pren­ticed to Glen Lean­za of Glen's Jew­ellery, al­most on a whim. "It was just one of those things," she says with a shrug. "Some­body sug­gest­ed it, it sound­ed like a good idea, and that was that." The ac­ci­den­tal jew­eller has been do­ing it for 25 years now. For a while, she was in part­ner­ship with Bar­bara Jar­dine, cre­at­ing the Alche­my la­bel. They suc­cess­ful­ly dis­trib­uted their work through Pre­cious Lit­tle at West Mall, but af­ter 13 years or so their di­verg­ing cre­ative styles led them to ex­plore oth­er ven­tures. "My work tends to be larg­er, more chunky. I love work­ing with sil­ver and nat­ur­al ma­te­ri­als...what­ev­er can be used to em­bell­ish." The tiger-eyed ar­ti­san choos­es se­mi-pre­cious stones over pre­cious gems like di­a­monds, and prefers mut­ed and neu­tral shades over colour. "I more au fait with browns, crys­tals, smoky quartz, cit­rine. I stay away from stones like amethyst and peri­dot, al­though it's still nice to have a lit­tle colour from time to time."

Turn­ing to nat­ur­al ma­te­ri­als al­so makes good busi­ness sense, with the price of raw ma­te­ri­als con­tin­u­ing to shoot up. Gold, she ex­plains rue­ful­ly, now hov­ers around $1,600 US an ounce. Var­i­ous tax­es and du­ties take their toll, too. On the bright side, though, lim­i­ta­tions on the avail­abil­i­ty of ma­te­ri­als force her to be more flex­i­ble and cre­ative. It's al­so im­por­tant to her to of­fer a va­ri­ety of pieces at the low­er end of the price scale, to make her work more ac­ces­si­ble to her pub­lic. She dis­trib­utes through The Gallery at Long Cir­cu­lar Mall, Philli­pa on Sad­dle Road and Meil­ing. Many artists find com­mis­sions lim­it­ing, as they are con­strained by the whims of their clients, but Ross en­joys them. "I love do­ing these. It's a chal­lenge in get­ting it right for the client, and it gives you a lit­tle more lee­way some­times. When you get it right, it feels great."

She thinks there's scope for young jew­ellers to break in­to the mar­ket and make their own name, but laments the loss of lo­cal op­por­tu­ni­ties for for­mal train­ing. A jew­ellery-mak­ing class that was taught for years at the John Don­ald­son Tech­ni­cal In­sti­tute has closed down.

Many re­tail­ers have al­so turned to im­port­ed pre-made items as the bulk of their stock, rather than re­ly on lo­cal skill. "There aren't many in­de­pen­dent artist jew­ellers. I'm lucky in that I start­ed 25 years ago, and I have a rep­u­ta­tion. It's still a strug­gle, though." One range of pieces that she has no prob­lem im­port­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing is the Same Sky line. These pop­u­lar glass bead ac­ces­sories are chunky, funky and bring a huge help­ing of pos­i­tive kar­ma to their pur­chasers: they are made by Rwan­dan women who are HIV-pos­i­tive or sur­vivors of the geno­cide. For these, Ross takes on­ly a mi­nus­cule mark-up, see­ing the ven­ture more as her per­son­al con­tri­bu­tion to the cause. The best ad­vice she can give to women who yearn for a new piece, es­pe­cial­ly in the face of high prices for com­modi­ties such as gold or sil­ver, is to look to their own old, worn, or bro­ken pieces as a source of met­al and stones. "Re­cy­cle it and make it look com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent," she ad­vis­es. "You'd be sur­prised at what you get.