Chapter 4: Dispatches from Honolulu — Science, Wax, and Shooting in Paradise

April 28, 2026

I'm writing this from Honolulu, where I've been attending the Materials Research Society conference. MRS is one of the flagship gatherings in materials science — the kind of room where people are presenting work on thin-film optics, crystallographic defects, organ-on-a-chip, and advanced biomaterials. My people. Perks of the job that I get to travel to network and learn (and thankful I am healthy enough to do so).

What they don't know is that there's a jewelry brand running in the background.

Between conference sessions I've been scouting shoot locations. Kapiolani Park at golden hour. The banyan trees near Diamond Head. I brought a small kit of Stone & Wild pieces, iphone and laptop with adobe suite, and a pocket LED panel, and I've been getting images that simply don't exist anywhere else in this collection. Hawaii light is different. The way it moves through canopy and bounces off volcanic stone is something you can't manufacture in a studio.

The Pharaoh Eye ring is coming with me to the Big Island and North Shore. More on that below.

View from our hotel.

What I'm Shooting

The Stone & Wild pieces I brought are here for a reason. I want contextual images that match the character of each stone. Paraibas on Punalu'u black sand. The Pharaoh Eye where the light hits horizontal and warm. Montana sapphires against white coral at Kailua. These aren't styled shots in the conventional sense. They're the stones in conversation with the geological materials that share their origin story. Basalt. Olivine. Ocean mist. Raw lava fields.

Stone & Wild is named for exactly this. The stones were wild before I set them. The images should be too.

Stone & Wild pieces I brought to photograph in a cute fox travel case from my Mom.

The Pharaoh Eye Drop

The Pharaoh Eye ring is a piece I've been thinking about for a long time, and the wax work for the next production run is coming up. I'll be sharing more details when I'm back at the bench, but I can tell you the form is designed around the idea of an eye motif that doesn't read as costume. Clean geometry, significant stone, nothing extraneous. The carving requires steady hands and good light, which means I do it on good days, in the morning, before anything else.

That's how this works. One piece at a time. No shortcuts.

So excited about this one of a kind sapphire ring that will be available soon.

What's on the Bench When I Return

The SPECTRUM collection carving phase continues when I land back in Boston. American scarab rings (Jewel Beetles). Bombe pieces in demantoid garnet and alexandrite. The champlevé enamel work is new for me, which means I'm moving slowly and deliberately through each wax. The enamel recesses are carved before casting, and there is no correcting them after the metal is solid. Whatever I put in the wax is what ships to you.

Crysina Resplendens American Jewel Scarab.

This is the thing I love most about lost-wax casting, and it's also what keeps me honest. It is a one-way process. Decisions in wax become permanent in metal. There is no going back after investment.

Free Gemstone Guides: Now Live

While I've been traveling, I also launched something I've wanted to build for a while: a two-guide opt-in for anyone who wants to understand the science behind what they're buying.

The first guide is the Treatment Transparency Guide. It covers every major gemstone treatment — heat, irradiation, fracture filling, surface diffusion — at the level of what actually happens at the atomic scale, how it affects durability and value, and the seven questions you should ask before buying any colored stone. I wrote it because the treatment disclosure problem in jewelry is real, it costs buyers real money, and it's fixable with about ten minutes of the right information.

The second guide is the Lost-Wax Casting Guide. Five thousand years of process history, step by step, with the materials science of what happens at each stage. I wrote it because "handmade" is used so loosely in jewelry marketing that it has nearly stopped meaning anything. Wax-carved and investment-cast is a specific, irreversible process. A piece made this way can only ever exist once. That distinction matters and I wanted to explain why.

Both guides are free. You get them immediately when you subscribe. The link is in the bio, in the footer of every email I send, and on the Free Guides page on the site.

If you're new here and wondering whether Bravais is the kind of brand you want to follow, those two guides will answer the question faster than anything else I could tell you.

Sign up on the bottom of my homepage here.

Back to the Conference

Yesterday morning Ryan presented work from our labs at Northeastern, we got shaved ice and did a photoshoot with the beach and Diamond Head in the background. I did my Subcutaneous Immunoglobulin infusion (SCIG) Monday for my autoimmunity, and we had a wonderful dinner at Senia featuring local tastes last night. I woke up at 5am to submit a grant on mainland time to the Gates Foundation about food supplements to treat Iron Deficiency that I am really excited about. Grades were turned in, and it is officially summer semester. Poolside this morning, and this afternoon I'll be at a session on biomaterials interfaces and meeting a friend and colleague for dinner.

This is my life and I am not complaining about it.

More images from the shoots as they happen on Instagram and TikTok. The Big Island leg starts Wednesday.

Professor Abby

Founder, Bravais Fine Jewelry