Welcome to Elephant Oak Atelier!
We are a small operation located in Luoyang, Henan, China. We specialize in sourcing various precious and semi-precious gems & stones, woods, bone, shell, and other fine jewelry-grade materials for use in both premade and bespoke jewelry. We offer prayer beads, malas, bracelets, earrings, pocket stones, rings and the materials they are made from - most of which commonly featured in Himalayan and Chinese devotion: amber, jade, turquoise, sandalwood, agar wood, ethically-sourced bone, agate, and more.
Our strategy is simple: find what our customers want, finish their piece, and deliver. We do all of this with one unfair advantage: much of what we sell is sourced and commissioned by ourselves either directly from a mine or tree farm and made in-house by our very own hands.
From Our Own Workshop
Walk the bead markets and bazaars long enough and you learn that the person who strung the strand is rarely the person selling it. We decided to be both.
Much of the wood and jade in this catalog came to us the slow way. We found the material. We checked the paperwork. We commissioned the pieces from carvers we know by name, in places just like where we live - Luoyang, the old imperial capital where Tang 3-colored porcelain and Golden Silk's history is local memory. The finished pieces came to us, and from us to you. Cradle to customer, one pair of hands in the middle that you can actually talk to.
The exceptions are few - antiques, pre-made pendants too beautiful to pass by, more affordable premade strings of beads and bracelets for the more conservative shopper. Check each listing for information on origin.
How We List
Every listing tells you what the piece is, where the material came from (when possible), and how old we honestly believe it to be. Antique means antique. Composite means composite. "Our supplier says 50 to 150 years" means our supplier says 50 to 150 years, and if it turns out older, you get a bonus.
When a material needs a warning, the warning is on the listing, not hidden on a page you will never find. When a material has no warning, then there is none to be made.
What We Don't Sell
Some materials stay out of the catalog: human bone and kapala objects, certain ivory, wild-harvested coral and Giant Clam. Not because the law says so everywhere, but because we decided the line was here and not there. The full reasoning lives on our Our Materials Sourcing page, and we would rather explain the line than quietly move it.
What We Don't Claim
We sell meaning, not medicine. A bead can carry two thousand years of symbolism and still not fix your bad credit or get rid of the old ghost lady that watches you sleep. Blessings come from your practice, not from us. The full policy is on the page titled Claims We Don't Make, which is exactly what it sounds like.
Talk to Us
Questions about a piece, a material, where something came from? Ask! If we don't know, we will say we don't know, and then we will probably go find out, because that is the fun part.