My name is Hal Hees, and I am a metalsmith and jewelry designer living and working in Fort Worth, Texas.  This is at least my third career, depending on how you count. I have been a lawyer, a medical practice manager, an aspiring writer and a stay at home Dad and husband.

Along the way I have been an organic gardener, a landscaper, a remodeler, a home chef, and a wheel thrown potter. Okay, 'home chef' is bragging, but I really like good food so I learned to make it. It may be a genetic thing. My father and his father cooked and our daughter is trained as a chef. 

I've been lucky. The arc of my life has been from doing what was necessary to doing what I want to do. The medical practice I managed was my wife's. She's retired from medicine now, but she's still a jewelry maven. (Click the "Cat" at the bottom of the page to visit her jewelry website). From her I learned to know and love jewelry of all kinds and eras, and it was natural to move from knowing it to becoming a metalsmith and making it. Now I make art to wear in silver, copper, brass, gems and semi-precious stones.   

Art that can be worn is a big part of what jewelry is about in the modern era, but jewelry serves many other purposes.  It is a symbol and a carrier of religious and spiritual power, and a token of membership in and loyalty to a group of like-minded people. It reminds you---and tells others something about---who you are and who you want to be, what you are proud of and where you come from.  

In many places and times jewelry has been the emergency savings of persecuted peoples who might have to flee at any moment with nothing but what they carried on them. In areas of the world where a woman's husband owns everything in their joint life, her jewelry may be her only personal wealth and so she wears it always.  It is her bank account.  

Whether it is wealth, security, an identifier, a talisman, or simply beautiful, jewelry matters to people and always has.  There is evidence of it as far back as there is evidence of our humanity. It satisfies our need to decorate our bodies and carry beauty with us.

The people I meet and talk to are the best part of this business. If you have a special request, want to order something a bit different or have a custom piece in mind, please click on Contact in the top menu and reach out to me. I love talking about jewelry almost as much as I love making it, and I would be happy to answer any questions and help you design something special.

Jewelry is a celebration of beauty.  It is a celebration of life.

Celebrate!