My name is Valeria, and I live in the Czech Republic — the source of virtually all the world's moldavite.

It began as walking. My husband, our dog Matiss and I spent weekends in the fields and sand quarries of southern Bohemia, looking for green glass in the dirt. Anyone who has done it will tell you the ratio: hours of nothing, then something that stops you where you stand. We still go most weekends, and it is still the part I like best.

The business started from a frustration. Moldavite barely leaves Czechia — most of it is sold within a few hundred kilometres of where it was dug — while the rest of the world buys green bottle glass and Chinese imitations at moldavite prices.

Now every stone that leaves this studio has been tested by the person who is selling it to you.

The same is true of the making. I design and set every piece myself — shaping the wire, choosing the metal, deciding how much of the stone to leave uncovered. No two moldavites are the same shape, so no setting can be reused; each one is worked out from the beginning. It is slow, and it is the reason nothing here exists twice. Nothing about this is a large operation, and I do not want it to be.

My family searches the fields with me, helps wrap and pack every order, and puts up with a kitchen table permanently covered in stones and tools. Everything you receive has passed through our hands before it reaches yours.

If you write, you are writing to me. That is the part of this work I would not give up.