Unique hand-made jewelry ... and the gift of charity, too

Football blah blah blah, NASCAR, shotguns, baseball .... ah, the girls have left the room.

OK, guys, listen up! You know how hard it is to buy a Christmas gift for your wife or girlfriend? There's the 'size' thing, the color thing, the 'what if she already has one' thing. Not to mention the rule about never giving a woman anything that plugs in. (Power tools? They hate 'em. Go figger.)

So, anyway, what can you do? Settle down! Just sit here at the feet of Dr. Santa (that's me) for the answer to your toughest holiday question.

Just wander into Art Metals Studio (cool name for a jewelry store, huh?) on Main Street and ask about Chris Sklba's limited edition pendant.

Chris has been working as a jeweler and metalsmith for 25 years, starting out with Lore Sydnor's VSO Ltd. on Main Street in 1982, nine years before he earned his BFA from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. When Lore left in 2004, Chris renamed the space Art Metals Studio and kept crafting original hand-made jewelry pieces, one or two a week. Do the math: that's close to 2,000 pieces of jewelry he's made over the years (and won a 1st place award from Wisconsin Jeweler's Association, among other prizes.)

Chris comes by the trade honestly: his grandfather, who moved the family to Racine, was a metalworker and shop foreman at Twin Disc. "I'd like to think some of his skills came down to me," Chris says. (The family was originally from Slovakia, which may explain the missing vowel in Sklba's surname.)

Anyway, back to that perfect Christmas gift. This year, for the first time, Chris has designed a limited edition series of pendants: 20 numbered pieces in a variety of metals and gems. So far, he and his staff have completed 10 of them: in varying combinations of silver, 22 karat mokume-gane (more about that later), diamonds or other gems. They're each unique, different from anything she'll find around someone else's neck, but more importantly they're all beautiful. They're not "girly," either.

Chris Sklba with two of the pendant variations

You might be surprised at what's decorating the pendant of your choice. Chris describes himself as an avid gem and mineral collector; hunks of petrified wood and crystals are all over the store (which used to be a butcher's shop in Racine's earlier days; the meat locker now holds the shop's safe.)

His face lights up as he describes the Mother Lode: Tucson's annual gem and mineral show, largest in the world, which takes place the first week in February. "I have a collection of gems," Chris says. "I started going to shows with $100 in my pocket. Now I go there with an open mind." He visits a wide variety of shows there -- from meteorites, gems, mastodon skeletons to diamonds -- spread out across the desert city each year. And he buys whatever takes his fancy, gems costing from $1 to $1,000 ... all of which then wait for the perfect combination of muse and customer to come into alignment.

Some of the pendants have gems, but all of them have a bit of rose gold and copper mokume-gane, an expensive inlay of precious metals. "Crazy-expensive," to be exact: $400 for a piece less than an inch long. Translated from the Japanese, mokume-gane means birdseye or woodgrain metal, incredibly thin layers that take on different designs as they are worked. A tiny piece is fused to each of the pendants, giving it a bit of color and appeal.

"It's fun to do a series," Chris says, enjoying the variations. Prices range from $295 to $625, depending on metal and gem combinations, although with only 10 completed so far, he could still make one from gold, rather than silver, and bigger diamonds if that fits your desire (and wallet). How naughty have you been this year? How good has she been?

There's a further holiday twist to these pendants, too, in keeping with the season. Chris' partner in the shop is his wife, Stephanie, who when she's not doing his books is VP of Community and Government Relations at Gateway Technical College. But she's also on the board of the Racine County Food Bank. And so 10% of the proceeds from Chris' holiday series will be donated to the food bank.

Two gifts in one. It doesn't get much better than this, guys.