Broken Ox Creations — Brand Bio — 2025

The first time I heard about a silversmithing class, it was at a rock club meeting. My immediate reaction was blunt: “Jewelry making? Sounds girly.” But I signed up anyway because I was in a “yes-man” phase of life — directly inspired by the movie Yes Man — where the rule was simple: say yes to anything that might lead somewhere, even if it didn’t initially appeal to me.

In my first class, I learned how to solder. After that, the instructor never came back. I kept attending the drop-in sessions anyway, learning by watching others, asking questions when it made sense, and experimenting on my own. Once soldering clicked, I started tacking together designs just to see what I could build.

A few months in, I set up a home workshop because I realized how much I enjoyed the craft. My apartment didn’t even have a working light in the living room, so I surrounded my workbench with candles, thinking I could claim some kind of “made under candlelight” mystique. In reality, you can’t measure or cut anything accurately in the dark. Eventually, I took the bus and picked up a lamp off Craigslist. It barely worked — bump it and the bulb would quit — but it was all I could afford as a full-time student paying my own way.

Every Saturday, I spent an hour and a half each way on the bus to get to that drop-in silversmithing class. On those rides, I read everything I could about silversmithing, goldsmithing, metallurgy — anything even remotely connected. Within six months, I was the one teaching the course.

By that point, I had been cutting stones for almost a year. Stones were still my real passion, and metalsmithing became the practical way to do something with the material I cared about most. Both metalwork and lapidary came naturally to me. Concepts made sense; techniques clicked. Because I was self-directed, I focused on whatever sparked my curiosity. No one was grading me or dictating what came next. I explored methods and ideas on my own timeline, and that autodidactic approach shaped me far more than any standardized training path could have. Most jewelers go through almost identical curriculums — Canada, Germany, it doesn’t matter — and they come out with similar skills and predictable designs. I took the opposite route. I made more mistakes than anyone else, simply because I tried everything without someone stopping me. Those failures and the occasional breakthrough became the backbone of my metal and stone work.

Eventually, I made it overseas and began mass-producing my designs. Seeing production studios capable of turning out half a million pieces a year shifted my entire perspective on the industry. Back in Canada — at craft fairs, in guilds, in small studios — I was surrounded by artists trying to do everything themselves: production, social media, sourcing, accounting, customer service. Most never grow past that point because it isn’t structurally possible. Without a team or scalable systems, a brand hits a ceiling.

I adjusted. I focused on being a designer — creating the original pieces and master molds — while working with overseas teams to handle the production. Some runs require twenty thousand stones to be set, and the scale speaks for itself. Building a functional business means building systems, not bottlenecking everything through one person.

Mass production, and eventually hiring local staff, are the reasons I’ve been able to grow as both a jeweler and a gem dealer. With Rubble Rock already running overseas cutting, the next step is focused specifically on Broken Ox: expanding the design line, scaling production, and eventually building a dedicated metalwork and gem-carving facility overseas to support that growth.

Adam Kelliher — Artist Statement / About the Artist — 2025

Born in 1990 and raised in a small northern British Columbia town, I’ve lived in Vancouver since 2012. I got involved in lapidary and metal arts in 2014 and threw myself into everything the local clubs offered. After about six years, I shifted toward a more independent, studio-based practice and began pursuing my own mining explorations. What started as a hobby moved through every phase—passion, obsession, consumption—until it became a purpose, a livelihood, and a calling.

Gemstones and precious metals are my forte, but I’ve never cared about using them in conventional ways. I can make mall-quality fine jewelry, but it doesn’t interest me. Rocks appeal to me because each one is unique, and there’s a grounded, almost mystical appeal to working with something pulled straight from the earth. They also hold real intrinsic value, which gives the work a legitimacy and depth you don’t get from assembling everyday materials or novelty crafts.

My designs fall into a few categories. There’s the commercial work, where I optimize the material on hand and create accessible pieces for the lower-priced market. Then there’s the side of me that pushes myself as an artist, which begins with a vision—often only half rendered in my imagination. Each idea comes with a built-in challenge: a tool I haven’t used yet, a technique I haven’t tried, or a sequence of steps so complex I could get lost in the planning. I enjoy the problem-solving. I take that half-formed vision in my mind and interpret it further, letting the unclear parts sharpen naturally instead of trying to force them. I anticipate the execution, and then I commit. The only way new designs come to me is by completing the ones already in my head. Finishing them clears space for the next wave. Every vision stays with me—hauntingly—until I see it through.

That’s what I enjoy most about art: the never-ending path it forces me to build, brick by brick. I can only see so far ahead, and the next stretch of the road only reveals itself when I finish the work sitting in front of me. It’s fulfilling. It gives me purpose.

Travel has reinforced that truth. I move around often for my businesses—Rubble Rock and Gem, The Jade Guys, 284 Art Studios—and the phrase “wherever I go, there I am” hits harder the more places I visit. Architecture changes, food prices shift, strangers react differently, and the scenery rotates, but the pattern stays the same: same story, different backdrop. What’s truly unique is home. Home is where my tools are, where I can push myself, challenge who I am, and build my character through the craft. Everywhere else, I’m just eating, sleeping, and talking. In the studio is where the real work happens.

This matters because so many people are missing that kind of magic in their lives—the passion, the spark, the internal path you build one step at a time. Attending to a calling is different from doing what simply “needs to get done.” The hardest parts of it are usually the ones that push you forward instead of sideways, and that’s what keeps me invested in the work. That path is where I discover the most, learn the most, and experience the most. And for me, that happens in my studio more than anywhere else on the planet. Nothing else completes me in the same way.