Alex Horst
Prescott, AZ
Alex Horst has been in the jewelry trade since he was a boy working alongside his father. Through the years he has mastered a variety of jewelry crafts from gem carving and stamp making to the traditional Japanese practice of Mokume-gane, or ‘wood grain metal.’
However, the making of work is only a function for Alex — a stone on a path toward completion — while the enjoyment that his clients get from his work is something far more rewarding, unexpected and shareable.
Since Alex’s story in the craft of jewelry making has spanned almost his entire life, it has given him many stories to share; in his own words, “I’d say 90% of people who buy my work are buying my story as much as the piece: the type of turquoise, where you got it — just a little backstory — people want that. It’s how they connect to a piece.”
Alex primarily makes southwestern jewelry now, it’s his staple and a kind of work that his unique stamps are perfect for, “I hope that my Peyote Bird work tells stories, through my stamp work — which is like a fingerprint — somewhere, sometime when I’m gone, someone will look at one of my pieces and say, oh yeah — that’s one of Alex’s stamps…”
All of Alex’s works are made with the hopes of creating jewelry that, as Alex says, is “wearable, comfortable, and at peace… a piece of jewelry that’s got silver and turquoise and you can wear it with a t-shirt and go to the grocery store and it looks good.” This is the mindset one might expect a teacher to have — a sense of daily importance and immediacy — as Alex also leads the Jewelry program at his local community college; which allows him to foster the same love of gems, materials, and jewelry crafting that he discovered as a boy in his parents’ shop.
Alex Horst's works, rugged and non-pretentious, hold a timeless sensibility and ageless value all their own. Owning a piece of Alex Horst jewelry is an investment in a long and enduring story, one that will last, like one of his stamps, far into the future and long after his stamps have laid still.
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