Some of you know that years ago when I ran the gallery, I gave a jewelry making course in my studio behind the gallery. I had a wonderful time doing it and firmly believe that professional pearl and bead stringers are among the nicest people on the planet. In the entire 10 years I gave the course, I had only one complaint and that was from someone who wouldn’t do the work and then objected when I finally denied her access to the studio and to me.

The course was intense and cost $300. It was a reasonable amount for the amount of time and effort involved, but it was expensive enough to filter out dilettantes. (Then, as now, I’m not interested in teaching people who aren’t serious about learning.) In any event, that course eventually became the basis of the DVDs offered on this site.

Although a couple of my students became close friends, most of them drifted away. When the gallery was open, some maintained sporadic contact but, not surprisingly, that stopped when I closed the gallery.

So, I was absolutely delighted when out of the clear blue sky I recently received the following message:

Fleury, Just a greeting from Seattle, WA. I’m one of your students who took classes with you in Houston approx. 15-20 years ago. By being exposed to your mentorship with deep knowledge of stringing stones, I developed a lifelong love of all things pertaining to creating jewelry and gemstones, also a passion for pearls. I just retired from nursing and plan to devote more time to my endeavors. I just want to thank you for passing along your many “pearls” regarding jewelry making/stringing. How fortunate I was that you opened up this world for me. Hope that you are well and happy…Oh, by the way, I just acquired my first Mikimoto pearl necklace (6mm/18″ length). I finally made it to the holy grail!

You can imagine how delighted I was to receive this kind of communication. And, although she promptly agreed to allow me to make the message public, the fact that I’m able to use it here has nothing to do with the pleasure it brought me.

I thought you might be interested.