About ALex Horst Biography and Awards

As a jewelry artist, Alex is well-known for his hand-made mokume. The process to fabricate mokume is time-consuming, tedious, and exact, which scares off most jewelry artists! From the Japanese tradition, mokume means “wood-eye” and gane means “metal.” This unique wood grain pattern was originally developed in 17th century Japan by Denbei Shoami, first used in the adornment of handles and sheaths for Samurai swords. The process involves stacking and fusing multiple layers of metal into a billet. The layers are rolled through a mill and patterns are developed through a combination of burring, filing, and chasing. Once the pattern is created, it is combined with silver and gemstones into a one of a kind piece of jewelry.

Simple geometry and clean lines are the cornerstone to Alex Horst’s gemstone carvings and jewelry creations because they allow the elegance and beauty of nature to speak for itself.  He then adds gemstones – either sparkling or opaque – to create visual texture, brilliance and balance. Metal is employed to create a functional frame for the stones.

But it is, primarily, the counterbalancing of the ductile properties of gold and silver with the rigid fragility of gemstones that most inspires Alex’s passion for creating jewelry.

Alex Horst was born in 1975 in Denver, Colorado, to a family who ran a jewelry supply business. It was this business that first sparked Alex’s interest in jewelry making. So much so, that by the tender young age of five, Alex was already learning from his father and grandfather how to cut gemstones. Soon after, Alex moved with his family to Arizona to his grandfather’s horse and cattle ranch in the Prescott area. There, Alex continued to learn and create so that, by the age of eighteen, his work was being sold and collected at numerous international, as well as national, gem shows.

Today, Alex’s jewelry – a natural progression from his early gemstone work – continues to evolve and grow along with his name as one of the premier gemstone carvers in the world.