Rasmussen Gems and Jewelry LLC

John Atwell Rasmussen, AKA GemLover, is an amazing talent that combines gemstones and metal to show off the best of each element.

John has always had a love of collecting rocks and minerals, but only began creating wearable art in the last few years.  John did major in geology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York where he earned both a B.S. and a M.S. degree.  After this, he put in 42 years of service starting as a volunteer firefighter and later working for Emergency Medical Services.  While putting his time and energy into working for the community, he taught geology at a local high school and later teaching EMS at University Hospital and Community College.

 

While this kept John busy; he also has a wife, four children, and eight grandchildren to fill his days.  In his spare time, though I can’t imagine where that would be, he loves lapidary, reading, chess, football, soccer and ice hockey. 

So how does one go from firefighter/teacher to wearable art creator?  According to John, his darling wife bought a batch of gemstones and dropped them on him stating “You’re the geologist, identify these!”  Well, now that they are identified John had to find something to do with them…and GemLover was born!  Since that fateful day, John set up a complete gem identification lab and learned wire wrapping and then lapidary cutting.  Not happy to stop there, John began to combine sheet metals with his stones and wire to create stunning works of art.  He continues to learn about his art through self research as well as taking classes from the International Gem Society, Gemological Institute of America and Penn Foster Career School.  If all this wasn’t enough, John is the current President of Western South Carolina Gem and Mineral Society in Greenville, SC and Guild Master for Artfire Artisan Jewelers Guild not to mention an active member of the HandmadeArtistsForum.

 

John is passionate about his work and offers this advice to all those that are considering selling their own handmade creations, “Do not expect to be able to sell without a lot of work in marketing yourself/shop/work.  Do not underprice your work just to sell it.  That devalues all our work.”

John does not have a brick and mortar shop, but can be found on various places on the web.  You can check John out on the Handmade Artist’ Shop, Artfire, Blog, Facebook 

 

Tags: gemstones, Handmade, Handmade Artists, handmade jewelry, Handmade Products

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