 After earning his graduate gemologist's
degree from the Gemological Institute of America in Santa Monica
in 1978, Todd became an amateur prospector.
He
became consumed by his passion in 1995, when he and his family began
working the historic Shooting Star mine northeast of Sacramento. It
includes 43 acres of private property and 320 acres of surrounding
legal gold and mineral claims.
Between the Shooting Star mine
and a syndicate of other local miners in the 30 square-mile area in
the heart of the Mother Lode region, Todd has secured enough heavy
metal to start his "California Gold" jewelry collection featured in
this website.
Gold from
Leftovers
Todd finds some of his gold in the
"tailings"--gravel from which the gold has been extracted-- left
behind by the 49ers. Modern recovery techniques permit a much higher
yield. But he finds most of his gold by dredging the very
high-altitude streams that were depleted 150 years ago.
Every
year, during the spring runoff from rains and melting snowpacks in
the High Sierras, rivers and streams become raging torrents.
Millions of tons of gravel and rocks--including ten-foot
boulders--come thundering down. The floods wash down fresh gold and
gold-bearing rocks that come to rest at the bottom of streambeds,
often embedded in sand and sediment.
To scour the creek
bottoms and riverbeds, Todd dons a skindiving suit and first
performs a visual check, hoping to get lucky and find a couple of
rare, large nuggets to add to his collection. Then he uses a
floating dredge that acts like an underwater vacuum cleaner. The
dredge sucks up mud, sand and compacted gravel.
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Separating the Gold
Letting water and gravity do the work,
the material is run though a sluice box that traps the heavier
materials. This concentrate is then run through a series of
screens to filter out the water and sand.
Most of the
gold is so tiny it's invisible, but Todd eagerly checks for
the glitter of any nuggets. Then he 'pans' the material,
swirling it around in a large pan that sloshes out the water
and lighter material. The heavy, black residue at the bottom
will then refined to separate out the actual gold he will use
to make into jewelry. By then it's almost sundown, and Todd
picks up his fishing rod and tries to catch some nice trout to
cook over the campfire. |
Making Jewelry
First, Todd uses any of the larger gold nuggets
recovered during his latest exploration to create rare,
one-of-a-kind nugget jewelry. Each piece is carefully designed
around the unique characteristics of the individual
nugget.
Then, using the lost wax casting method, he
meticulously hand-carves the design of each jewelry item. If it is
to be a one-of-a-kind piece, he casts it directly into gold, which
is then painstakingly hand-finished.
If the design is to be
used for more than one piece, he makes a mold of the wax. In the
final step, hot wax is injected into the mold and it is then cast
into gold jewelry. Whether one- of-a kind or part of a multiple
design, each piece of jewelry is stamped inside with a hallmark
authenticating it as genuine California Gold -- a tiny Grizzly Bear,
the state symbol.
Handcrafted Look of
1850s
Todd's special aged finish includes his own
artistic impression of jewelry that might have been created in the
gold fields. He uses hundreds of hammer strokes, one of the
hand-crafted methods employed in ring-making during that period. The
result is a gold band, made from the original material, which looks
to be hundreds of years old.
Aside from the aesthetic and
historic value of using gold recovered from the actual Mother Lode,
there are practical advantages that make Todd's California Gold
superior to other forms of gold jewelry.
Traditional gold is
alloyed -- mixed with nickel or silver to dilute it. Most gold
jewelry is diluted to 14-karat or less. Higher-priced gold items
costing thousands of dollars at exclusive stores on Fifth Avenue or
Rodeo Drive usually top out at 18-karat.
But Todd's
California Gold is never diluted. It remains in its natural state,
just as it is formed by nature in the Mother Lode 20-karat. The
higher the karat, the purer the
gold.
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Bracken Jewelers