The truck pulled out and I looked at what had spilled. While I didn’t have a true understanding of what I was looking at I did realize that it contained very important jewelry designs. I quickly excused myself and hopped in my car and sped after the dump truck. I flagged the driver at a stop light and convinced him to sell me some of the “scrap” on the back of the truck and then arranged to ship it home. It took almost a year of researching and picking the brains of numerous folks in the jewelry industry before I started to fully understand what I had stumbled across and how it was used.

I learned that the pieces I had saved from the scrap yard were exquisitely crafted hubs, blocks of steel with intricate designs hand-carved into the top surface dating back to the 1800s. In any case, I was hooked on the subject, fascinated by the workmanship and determined to find and collect every hub, die and roll I could get my hands on, while also figuring out how to put versions of these designs back into production.