One of my grandfather's did a lot of lapidary work, the other came from a long line of blacksmiths. Neither of these things really registered with me in a significant way until about 5 years ago. Reading a science magazine I came across an article on how we were able to grow rubies by taking the materials that ruby is made up of and basically getting a furnace hot enough to melt them into stone. So after poking around on the internet I found somebody selling them and bought a few for curiosities sake. As soon as I got my first few I was hooked. My dwarven DNA said I needed more, and different stones too! About 3 orders later my brain kicked in and said, "Mat you're spending a lot of money on pretty things to look at that you don't even look at that often since you keep it in a locked chest in the back of a cave guarded by 3 troglodytes."
It didn't take long to wrestle my artistic and creative drive in that direction and figured that if I started making things with them it would be good justification to acquire more. With what little I was able to sell I was able to take a class buys some tools, and start to collect lapidary supplies.(Pretty expensive stuff and my family sold off my grandfather's equipment when he passed.) I found better suppliers and have been increasing production ever since. Very soon I'll be listing some stones that I tumbled set in silver, and I hope to expand into leather work, and gold soon.