The banding is a record of how the stone formed.

Agate develops in layers, filling a cavity in volcanic rock over time, each band laid down as conditions changed — mineral content, temperature, the presence of water. What you are looking at is a cross-section of that process, which is why no two stones carry the same pattern and why matching a pair takes sorting rather than ordering.

These run chocolate brown through cream and caramel, two stones per ear, each framed in gold-filled wire that follows the edge of the stone rather than obscuring it. Ear wires are formed by hand.

The neutral palette makes these considerably more wearable than their size suggests — they go with camel, cream, black, denim, olive and rust without adjustment.

Natural stone. The pair you receive will not match this photograph exactly, and that is the point.