Tsuga Beadwork

Bold, global-inspired beaded jewelry, for the cosmopolitan soul.
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09/29/2026

Tomorrow.
These pieces are built to be worn. Not displayed. Not saved for a special occasion that never arrives.
The weight is intentiyaponal. The structure is visible. It lays true or it doesn't ship.
Last chance before it goes live.
Comment LIST right now and I'll send it to your inbox before it hits the shop.

09/28/2026

Ferronerie showed up in Renaissance ironwork before it ever showed up in jewelry. Textiles, bookbinding, decorative metalwork on furniture. The pattern was doing structural and ornamental work for centuries before anyone thought to put it around a neck.

Tiger eye made sense for this one specifically. The chatoyancy means the surface reads differently depending on the light and the angle. The pattern shifts with it. The gold beads aren't decoration. They're part of the repeat.

Provenance Unknown. October 1.

09/25/2026

The stone is sunstone. Feldspar family. The internal glitter is called aventurescence, and it comes from copper platelet inclusions oriented parallel to the cleavage plane. That's not a coating or a treatment. It's the structure of the mineral itself.

It also means the piece reads differently depending on how you move. The photograph gets one angle. The bracelet gets all of them.

Provenance Unknown. October 1. Comment OCTOBER for the shop link. Comment LIST to get it first.

09/24/2026

The fix was simple- rather than starting over, I just added a couple of stones to add weight and hold this strand in place. The geometry at that junction is what controls the angle of the base. Just a minor structural change. I didn’t wrap my head around it until a few trials. This piece is part of Provenance Unknown. Dropping October 1. Comment October and I’ll send you the shop link as soon as it goes live. Comment YOINK and get early access!

09/22/2026

Provenance Unknown is the tag museums put on objects when the ownership history is complicated. It's also the name of my new collection, dropping October 1. The geometry comes from European court jewelry. The construction is mine. More this week.

09/21/2026

Marie-Etienne Nitot made jewelry for Napoleon. His work is in the Louvre. Mine is in thread and snowflake obsidian, a volcanic glass whose white patterning forms as cristobalite crystallizes during cooling. The structure is borrowed. The construction is original. Provenance Unknown drops October 1. Save this post if you want to follow along before it goes live.

09/17/2026

Seed beads as structural struts: a cautionary tale.

Bugle beads as structural struts: a necklace that actually lays flat.

Same concept. Different load-bearing capacity. The physics was not subtle about it.

This piece is part of a collection dropping October 1. If you want first access, comment NOTIFY below.

I'll send you the link before it goes public.

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09/15/2026

I have a PhD in forest wildlife ecology. I also have a bead chest the size of a small refrigerator.

These are not unrelated facts.

I'm Grace. I design and make architectural beaded gemstone jewelry under the name Tsuga Beadwork. Every piece starts as a chicken-scratch structural sketch. Then the bead chest opens. Then I figure out whether the physics works, and if it doesn't, I add a truss until it does.

I grew up in Skokie, Illinois, one of the most genuinely diverse zip codes in America. My family is Polska Roma, Indian, Welsh, and Chicagoan in roughly equal measure. I have been studying ancient and traditional jewelry from across the world since before I knew that's what I was doing.

The jewelry is the long-term result of all of that.

If you're the kind of person who wants to know how something was made, where the stone came from, and why those decisions were made: you're in the right place.

09/14/2026

You don't need metal to look amazing.

I know. Controversial. But hear me out.

The assumption that real jewelry means gold or silver is a marketing decision someone made a long time ago, and a lot of people have been spending accordingly ever since.

Tsuga pieces are built from gemstone and glass bead. Sterling silver shows up exactly once, at the clasp or the earring hook, because physics requires a finding and I am not going to argue with physics.

Everything else is stone and thread and a structural stitch I invented in 9th grade because the materials I needed didn't exist yet.

The result is a piece that stops people mid-sentence at a market table. Not because it's metal. Because it's built.

If you've been waiting for permission to care about jewelry that isn't fine jewelry: here it is.

09/12/2026

Wildlife ecology professor. Self-taught jewelry designer since high school. These are the same person, it turns out. Tsuga Beadwork is fusion jewelry, drawing from Silk Road metalwork, Byzantine ornament, ancient central Adjan design, and whatever museum rabbit hole I'm currently in. No metal in the designs (just the clasps and earring hooks). No copies. No "global-inspired." Just pieces with reasons to exist. Hi, I'm Grace. What's your story?

Address

Las Cruces, NM
88001

Website

http://www.tsugacreations.com/

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