✦ Free Shipping on orders of $250+ ✦ QUESTIONS?: (920)-267-7952 ✦ Studio Appointments available
✦ Free Shipping on orders of $250+ ✦ QUESTIONS?: (920)-267-7952 ✦ Studio Appointments available
About Skölland
I make jewelry for people who need their adornments to mean something.
Skölland is a one-woman studio in Door County, Wisconsin, where I create edgy fantasy-inspired fine jewelry through lost wax casting, ancient and innovative metalworking techniques. Each piece takes days to weeks of focused, hands-on work.
For my one-of-a-kind pieces, the mold is destroyed after a single casting - what comes of the fiery pour will never be made again.I believe jewelry should be as unrepeatable as the person wearing it. In a world of algorithms, minimalism, and mass production, I prefer the ancient path: hand-carved wax, molds that die for their single creation, and the kind of obsessive craftsmanship that makes people think I’m slightly unhinged.
They’re not entirely wrong..
Meet the Artist
Claire Steckel
Just over a decade ago, I was stringing beads in my first apartment, frustrated that the jewelry I imagined did not exist anywhere. So I started trying to make it. I taught myself metalsmithing with a plumber's torch, then sought out master goldsmiths who took me on to refine my techniques and show me just what I didn't know- YouTube tutorials only get you so far when you’re working with molten metal, and there’s definitely a science to this stuff. Artistry alone isn’t enough to cut it.
I came to metalwork from culinary arts, with a background in baking. The precision transferred: measuring, timing, understanding how materials behave under heat. My favorite difference is that jewelry doesn’t have a shelf life, and nobody complains if your dinner rolls take six weeks to materialize.
I realized early on that most jewelers were playing it safe - making the same things, reselling from the same wholesalers, and calling it a day. That wasn’t going to work for the kind of pieces I wanted to create. I wanted to build things that felt like they’d been pulled from a myth, or unearthed from a cathedral floor, or forged for someone who needed their jewelry to carry weight beyond its metal content. The Minnesota Renaissance Festival was where everything clicked. A place where wearing a dragon scale ring to breakfast made sense. Where customers became collectors (and friends). Where creating something boldly different was the entire point.
Seven years of professional smithing later - working in argentium silver, 10K through 18K gold, with precious and semi-precious gemstones - I still get genuinely excited about melting metal with fire. It’s sanctioned pyromania with better insurance. (I really hope my insurance company doesn’t read this ~ love you guys)
What Inspires the Work
Medieval artifacts bleeding into modern mythology
Cathedral architecture and constellation maps.My work lives at the intersection of brutalist structure and ethereal fantasy - where gothic architecture might hold books instead of stained glass, and dragon scales could be forged from stars. I draw from Norse mythology, Celtic symbolism, celestial imagery, and the darker corners of folklore. But the pieces aren’t illustrations of thosethings. They’re translations and transmutations. A client’s grief becomes a raw, almost ravenous thing in silver and stone. A life transition becomes two serpents pulling in opposite directions. An identity someone can’t quite articulate becomes a ring they never take off.
That’s what I mean when I say jewelry should mean something. Not sentiment. Not a letter stamped on a circular gold disk. Meaning - the kind you feel in your chest before you can put words to it.
The Studio
Every Skölland piece is made by hand in my Door County, Wisconsin studio.
There are no production lines, no birthstone bands for resale, no assistants finishing the work. It’s me, my tools, and whatever music is loud enough to drown out the buzz of the ultrasonic cleaner or the drone of my dust collector.
Most pieces begin as a block of wax. I carve the design by hand - a process that can take days of focused work. The wax model is encased in plaster, placed in a kiln, and the wax burns away, leaving a void in the exact shape of the piece. Molten metal fills that void. The plaster is broken apart to reveal the casting. For my one-of-a-kind work, that mold is gone. Destroyed. What you hold will not be made again.
From there, I finish each piece by hand: cutting, filing, sanding, setting stones, polishing - whatever needs to be done. Every surface you touch has been shaped and inspected before it leaves my bench.
Your Story, Your Piece
Whether you’re here for a one-of-a-kind piece from a collection, a custom commission that’s never existed before, or a ring for the most important moment of your life - I’m here to make something worthy of the story you’re living.
~ Claire Steckel, Founder & Goldsmith
