Cocoon Jewelry

Kathy and Ben Stout have achieved a remarkable fusion of science and craft.

They're specialists in stream ecosystems with two decades of field experience.

The Stouts are experts on the Caddis fly, a unique insect which builds a cocoon made of leaves, sticks or small pebbles from a stream bottom.

The Caddis live in their case until they eventually metamorphosize into adults, moth–like insects with fuzzy wings quite common around lights on a summer evening.

In 1995 Ben Stout went to a conference and had a thought: get the Caddisflies to build their cases out of pieces of gemstones instead of stream debris.

Two years later, after countless failed experiments, the Stouts succeeded: the Caddis began building their cases out of the gemstone fragments.

The Stouts now fracture, sort and polish gemstones to a fine finish and provide them to Caddis in a simulated stream ecosystem.

The Caddis are raised through adulthood and when their day comes, say the Stouts, "we simply open the windows and doors of our laboratory and let the adult Caddis fly away,... while we take their abandoned cases and recycle them into beautiful Nature Crafted Jewelry".

From their website:

We raise Caddis fly larvae in a predator–free simulated stream environment, providing them with gems and minerals in place of natural stream materials.

The Caddis flies then produce a case they use for protection, respiration and camouflage.

When the Caddis flies emerge as adults, they leave behind their unique cases.

An article about their work appeared last summer in Mountain Discoveries magazine, and there's a small feature in the May 2005 National Geographic magazine about them (in the Geographica section towards the front of the magazine).

[via AG]