The British jeweler Stephen Webster travels the world like most people travel across town. One day he’s at his workshop in London. Then he’s in Miami. Next, he’s in Shanghai. The only way to keep up with his glamorous, extremely peripatetic lifestyle is to follow along on Instagram, though even vicarious travelers are bound to get a bit dizzy.
Every February, however, Webster parks himself for a week in Tucson, Ariz., to indulge in one of his favorite pastimes: hunting for colored stones. The Sonoran Desert city plays host to an annual confluence of buying shows dedicated to the gemstone, mineral, and fossil trades. Webster, a colored stone devotee best known for his edgy yet sophisticated style, has barely missed a gathering in 41 years.
When Gem + Jewel caught up with the rockhound at this year’s Tucson shows, it’s clear that time has not dulled his exuberance for the gem-shopping experience. “I just bought the most amazing, totally-gray-with-no-overtones-of-lavender, unheated, natural tanzanite,” Webster said on a break between shows. “It’s a rare beast. The guy wouldn’t even come down one penny. I’m like, ‘Come on, man. Who else is going to buy this?’”
It’s a fair question. Esoteric gemstones set in spectacular, diamond-paved designs are Webster’s calling card, and have been since 1989, when he founded his eponymous brand based partly on the stones and colors he discovered in Tucson when he started attending the shows with his then-boss, the Canadian jeweler Mike Ridding, in 1983. “By the time I became a jeweler, I developed a style that was rooted in me having come here,” Webster says.
Stephen Webster one-of-a-kind Full Bleed ring
Exhibit A: The 1995 debut of Webster’s seminal Crystal Haze collection, a range of rings, bracelets, earrings, and necklaces featuring thin layers of hard stones — such as turquoise, onyx, chalcedony, and chrysoprase — overlaid with faceted clear quartz. “It was bits of gems that weren’t worth much that I made look like they belonged in a piece of fine jewelry,” Webster says. “It still sells because you can see it from a mile away. And it does it in the least expensive way possible because the material is fairly mundane.”
When he introduced the collection, the idea of a designer using anything but the finest gems was considered radical, especially among retailers, the gatekeepers of the fine jewelry industry, who were known for shunning anything that didn’t comport with traditional notions of preciousness. Webster was clever (and connected) enough to sidestep them. Through a friend with ties to the music industry, he landed a meeting in 1998 with Madonna, who bought two rings. Months later, the first photos of the Material Girl with her soon-to-be-husband, Guy Ritchie — a Crystal Haze ring perched jauntily on her index finger — launched Webster into the jewelry stratosphere.
It was a fittingly audacious start for the once-aspiring fashion designer from the rough and tumble British port town of Gravesend. And it telegraphed something about him that has proven true in the decades since: Webster is unapologetic about slaying the industry’s sacred cows.
Webster's much-copied toi et moi engagement ring (actually two rings) for Megan Fox, who was betrothed to Machine Gun Kelly
Take the whole notion of women buying jewelry for themselves. In the 20th century, women wore jewels purchased for them by men, full stop. When Webster introduced Crystal Haze, however, “the women who wanted it were buying their own rings,” he explains. “And this term started coming around: ‘women’s self-purchase.’ I was the perfect candidate for that because I was selling my jewelry to women — no guy would ever have bought a piece. He’d be like, ‘I have no idea. This doesn’t make any sense to me.’”
Webster has maintained his relevance by ensuring that his loyal cadre of female self-purchasers always has something new to covet. “I suppose my personality is such that I don’t sit back much,” he says. “It’s always a bit like, ‘What’s next for me? And what’s next for me in this industry?”
Emerald and diamond earring
Even, or especially, men—the industry’s newest and most promising demographic. Webster, a walking billboard for bejeweled masculinity with his blackened silver chain necklace and chunky silver rings, introduced his first full men’s collection, Rayman, in 2021. His newest project, however, is very deliberately gender neutral.
Called “I Wanna Be Yours…,” the collection features seven 18k gold and enamel pendants designed to look like records. It’s a collaboration with Webster’s good friend, the punk poet John Cooper Clark, whose poem of the same name has earned more than a billion listens on Spotify. “They look like records because he released all his poems back in the day on colored vinyl,” Webster says. “And I’ve got them all.”
Webster’s love of music is a throughline in his work. So is his obsession with the thorny aspects of love. In 2022, he designed a toi et moi engagement ring for Machine Gun Kelly and Megan Fox called “Love is Pain” featuring an emerald and diamond set on two magnetic and interlocking bands of thorns.
“I’ve managed to morph my personality and my craft and my enjoyment of life into what I do perfectly, actually,” he says. “And that’s something. But at the same time, there’s a line you don’t want to cross. I don’t want to be like the clown jeweler. Look, my jewelry is beautifully made. But it’s got an element of humor. And that’s a very important part of the package.”
Top, from left: Cockfight one-of-a-kind brooch, designer Stephen Webster, Fly by Night ring
