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Meet David Nassi of 100% Natural Ltd.
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Carrying on a Family Legacy of Natural, Colored Gems
For David Nassi, the gemstone business isn’t just a career or an area of interest: It’s a family legacy.
“I started working with my father about 20 years ago. He started a colored gemstone business back in the 70s, when he moved here from India. I apprenticed as a lapidary for about two years,” David explained. “And after that full-time apprenticeship I moved more into buying and selling the stones and other aspects of the business. And then we just built our 100% Natural brand over the last 15 years or so.”
Keep reading to learn more about David and the beautiful, colored gemstones he works with.
Finding New Beauty in Old Treasures
Though David does work with select miners around the world, many of the gems that pass through 100% Natural Ltd. are antiques.
The business specifically specializes in natural and untreated stones, providing certificates from leading laboratories to verify their finest stones’ authenticity.
“A lot of the stones that we deal in are reclaimed or antique stones, and we’ll add value to them through the cutting process and through just optimizing their beauty through lapidary skills.”
An Instant Friendship
David first became familiar with Thesis Gems through Instagram, and though it took several years before he had the opportunity to meet Cate in person last year, the two became fast friends.
“We met for the first time in real life in Tucson last year, and then we’ve just sort of built our friendship over that time. She had shown interest in my work and in the stones that I was dealing in, and it just kind of grew naturally from there.”
Along with their passion for working with beautiful stones, David and Cate share a love of dancing and music. They also both love nature, which shapes the way they approach buying and selling gems. Both 100% Natural Ltd. and Thesis Gems prioritize sustainability in the work they do and the gems they source.
Sourcing Beautiful Stones while Reducing Negative Impacts
Working with reclaimed and antique stones is naturally more sustainable than sourcing from large-scale, high-impact miners. After all, there’s nothing more sustainable than finding a new use for an old object.
“I don’t think there’s any aspect of the gem business that is 100% sustainable, because we’re dealing in a finite resource. But as much as a reclaimed or antique gem can be sustainable, it is,” David explained. “These stones [were] mined out of the ground several decades, if not centuries ago.”
And when David does deal in newly mined stones, he primarily works with small-scale, local miners who are mindful about the environmental impacts of their work.
“Most of them are artisanally mined through small producers in countries where farming is the main sort of commerce for those people who are mining the gems. So, a lot of these small-scale miners are as sustainable as they can be in their country with low-impact mining, and they focus on not really disturbing the ground too much.”
In the future, David hopes to build more relationships with larger mines that make sustainability a top priority.
To learn more about David and the beautiful stones he’s working with at 100% Natural Ltd., visit his website. And make sure to follow David on Instagram for more updates.