Strong Medicine Studio
Mount Shasta under a stacked lenticular cloud, snow on the peak, forest at its foot

Mount Shasta, 2020 — from the road up to the studio.

Direction F · The Room · v3 — a prototype for review

Strong
Medicine
Studio

Potent Handmade Jewelry

An artist's apothecary in the trees at Mount Shasta — where silversmith Jenna Knight lived for ten years, where her studio still stands, and where this jewelry was made. The stones are the ingredients. The jewelry is the medicine.

Enter the Studio Find the Work
Jenna's studio house among tall pines and autumn trees in Mount Shasta
The studio in the trees. Jenna's house and studio in Mount Shasta, photographed in 2020 — ten years of her life were lived, and worked, in this clearing.
Inside the studio — Jenna's workbench under tall windows, the wooden Strong Medicine sign hanging above it
Just inside the door. The bench under the windows, the sign she carved for it overhead.

The threshold

Outside, the mountain.
Inside, lamplight and drawers.

The forest is cool and green and enormous. The studio is the opposite: warm, close, and full — aged wood, amber glass, stones in drawers, tools worn to the hand. Everything in it was gathered or made by one person, over years. Come closer. Some of it opens.

Inside · the room

Inside, the apothecary

The threshold promised lamplight and drawers; this is the room itself. Against the wall stands the cabinet where the ingredients are kept: stones, silver, findings, letters, things found on walks. Most of it stays shut, the way real cabinets do. Four things in it are out for you to find — a bottle among its crystals, a drawer, a glass dome, a tray of stones. Open them. Each one keeps a specimen card.

The artist's apothecary, imagined for the studio: a workbench under a tall window at dusk — through the glass, Mount Shasta in the artist's own October 2019 photograph — and a hutch of bottles, books and stones above a bank of six drawers

Four discoveries at a time — the cabinet changes as the work does. if a drawer won't open, it isn't for you. yet. — J.

Through the window: Mount Shasta, October 2019 — the artist's own photograph, from her years on the mountain. The room around it is an apothecary imagined for her studio — a bottle, a drawer, a dome, a tray of stones, waiting to be opened.

Kept with the cabinet

The specimen cards

Every stone that matters here gets a card: what it is, where it comes from, what it has meant to the people who carried it before. This is the current set — the same four you can find in the room above.

Strong Medicine StudioSpecimen No. 001

MOONSTONE

feldspar, of the moon's own mineral family

Two moonstone perfume phial pendants on dark wood — the Moonstone Phials, 2018

Moonstone is a feldspar that carries its light inside it. Turn a cabochon slowly and a soft glow — adularescence, named for the Adula mountains of Switzerland — rolls across the surface, like moonlight moving on water.

In folklore, moonstone has long been carried as a traveler's stone and a stone of the night: of intuition, tenderness, and beginnings. In contemporary crystal practice it is associated with the heart's quieter work — calm, receptivity, love.

the phials are from 2018 — I still reach for this stone first. — J.

See what the artist made with it → Snakebite Moonstone Ring · $190
Strong Medicine StudioSpecimen No. 002

TURQUOISE

hydrous copper aluminum phosphate

The collected vintage Damele turquoise ring — pale spiderwebbed turquoise in sterling silver

Turquoise is one of the oldest worked stones in the Americas — copper and iron in aluminum phosphate, colored from sky blue to green by the ground it slept in. The stone in the drawer is from the Damele mine in Nevada, a small American mine known for pale, finely spiderwebbed material.

Turquoise holds a central place in Diné (Navajo) and Zuni jewelry traditions, set in silver for well over a century and carried as a stone of protection and blessing. In folklore far beyond the Southwest, it is a traveler's safeguard and a token of friendship.

this ring is collected, not mine — I keep it to learn from. — J.

See the collected turquoise →
Strong Medicine StudioSpecimen No. 003

HERKIMER DIAMOND

double-terminated quartz, Herkimer County, New York

The Nebula Firekeeper — its Herkimer diamond set in hand-stamped sterling silver

A Herkimer diamond is not a diamond at all, but a quartz crystal that grew with a point at both ends, suspended in dolomitic limestone in Herkimer County, New York. It comes out of the ground already faceted — by its own growing, not by a cutter's wheel.

In contemporary crystal practice, Herkimers are prized as stones of clarity and attunement, said to amplify whatever they are set beside. They are carried for clear seeing, and for paying attention to dreams.

the Nebula's stone — the largest I have ever set. — J.

See what the artist made with it → Nebula Firekeeper · $480
Strong Medicine StudioSpecimen No. 004

MOSS AGATE

chalcedony, holding a garden

The Guidance Ring — moss agate in a hand-stamped sterling setting

Moss agate is a chalcedony that holds a garden: green mineral inclusions branch through the clear stone like moss, like ferns, like the floor of the forest it is named for. No two cabochons keep the same landscape.

Agates have been carried as grounding stones since antiquity, and in folklore moss agate belongs to gardeners, and to patience — a stone of growth and steadiness. In contemporary crystal practice it is associated with calm, and with starting again.

every one is a different piece of the forest floor. — J.

See what the artist made with it → Guidance Ring · $225 Also set in the Astral Essence Phial · $395

Inside · the workbench

Where the ingredients
become the medicine

The cabinet holds what the forest and the years provided. The bench is where it changes state: silver is cut, heated, hammered, and persuaded; a stone is chosen and given a setting; a thing that was a mineral becomes a thing that is worn. Fire, metal, stone, tools, hands. That is the whole alchemy, and it happens here, one piece at a time.

The full studio — benches, tools, drawers and tall windows looking onto the trees

The whole room. Benches, presses, drawers of stones — and the forest at every window.

Jenna's open palm wearing a full set of her hand-forged rings, a FireKeeper lighter case and stacked stone bracelets, on weathered wood

Her hand, her work — a full set in quartz, amethyst and silver, Mount Shasta, California, 2018. Everything made here passed through this palm first.

Jenna's tattooed hand wearing a hand-forged scale ring, held over snow

Winter hands. A hand-forged scale ring over snow, Mount Shasta, 2019. The hands are the presence; no portraits required.

Jenna's actual workbench in the Mount Shasta studio — a small oak drawer cabinet standing on the bench, a white display hand wearing a ring, a map pinned to the wall, photographs clipped along a wire above, grey flat-file drawers below

The bench itself. Jenna's real bench in the Mount Shasta studio, photographed as it stands — the small drawers everything is kept in, the white hand that minds a ring, the map on the wall. The room above is this bench, remembered a little larger.

Silver arrives as sheet and wire, dull as a coin. The torch brings it to the edge of melting; the hammer gives it its decisions; files and stones take the decisions back where they were wrong. A stone is set last, by hand, with pressure and patience — fire first, then patience — and the piece is finished when it looks like it was always going to exist.

Jenna's tattooed wrist wearing the sterling serpent cuff
The serpent cuff on the maker's wrist — every piece is measured against this arm before it leaves.
The maker's tattooed hand and scale ring over snow
The hands themselves: tattooed, scarred by the work, unmistakably the tools.
The black Strong Medicine Studio card with its winged caduceus maker's mark
The studio card. It travels with the work — tucked into parcels, pinned above the bench.

The far end of the bench · the artist

Jenna Knight with long braids, in her studio

The silversmith — Jenna Knight, at home in the studio. You have been in her room this whole page; this is who it belongs to.

Made by one pair of hands

I'm Jenna Knight, the Choctaw silversmith behind Strong Medicine Studio.

I make jewelry that has a presence. Substantial silver, unusual stones, something you keep looking at on your own hand. I'm drawn to the way a stone catches light, the marks left by working metal, and the feeling that a piece belongs to someone before they've found it.

The name Strong Medicine comes from my relationship with stones, symbolism, and intention. Their metaphysical associations are part of how I choose and work with them. Beauty matters to me, and so does meaning.

Mount Shasta, the forest, and the things I collect all find their way into my work. Each piece begins with something that catches my attention and becomes something I want to put into the world. What it means to you becomes part of its story.

Jenna's whole tattooed hand on weathered wood, wearing a cluster of fire opal rings, a FireKeeper lighter case and an opal cuff

Her hand, her work — fire opal pieces, Shasta-Trinity National Forest, 2019.

The finished work

The Strong Medicine

What the cabinet and the bench were for. Six pieces, finished and available — pick one up and look at it the way you would at the bench. Prices are the live prices; every piece links to its page in the shop.

Examine — tap the piece, then drag to look around

Nebula Firekeeper

Herkimer diamond in hand-stamped sterling silver — a lighter carried as an amulet, fire kept close. Specimen No. 003 came from this piece.

$480Strong Medicine originalView the piece

Examine — tap the piece, then drag to look around

Astral Essence Phial

A re-imagined 1940s sterling purse perfume bottle, its hinged case set with moss agate.

$395Strong Medicine originalView the piece
The Vessel Pendant — sterling silver perfume bottle pendant

The Vessel Pendant

A working perfume bottle in sterling silver, mandala-stamped, made to carry a scent or a ritual blend.

$315Strong Medicine originalView the piece
Guidance Ring — moss agate in a hand-stamped sterling setting

Guidance Ring

Moss agate in a geometric, hand-stamped sterling setting. It sits in the cabinet's dish — Specimen No. 004.

$225Strong Medicine originalView the piece
Snakebite Moonstone Ring — moonstone in sterling silver

Snakebite Moonstone Ring

Moonstone set in sterling silver with handcrafted details — the stone from the bottle in the cabinet, Specimen No. 001.

$190Strong Medicine originalView the piece
Vintage Zuni Knifewing ring with onyx, turquoise, coral and mother of pearl inlay

Vintage Collectable Zuni Knifewing Ring

Black onyx, turquoise, coral and mother of pearl inlay. Size 5½. Not made at this bench — collected, loved, and kept in the company of the work.

$245Collected vintageView the piece
Find the Work — the whole collection →

All fifteen pieces live in the shop: clear photographs, prices, availability, checkout. The apothecary is for lingering; the collection is one tap away whenever you're done lingering.

A burning smudge stick trailing rainbow smoke, held in Jenna's hand

The pause between pieces. "Grateful," 2019.

You leave the way you came in.

Past the bench, out through the trees. The work stays here, being made; a few pieces also live out in the world.

A few Strong Medicine pieces are also featured at Hidden Gem, the vintage shop Jenna runs with her partner Clare in Hudson, New York.

Visit Hidden Gem →

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