About Us

Socially Responsible Business Practices

Our Designs

Although many of our designs represent a collaborative effort between us and the artisans that work with us, K&S has an in-house designer who heads and oversees this process.  Andrea Rodriguez-Tarazi, a native of Colombia, is K&S's principal designer.  Ms. Rodriguez-Tarazi has been making seed jewelry for over five years.  She learned the basics of jewelry making from her aunt who also designs and makes jewelry in Colombia.  Ms. Rodriguez-Tarazi is very excited to have the opportunity to bring a little bit of South America's beauty and culture to her adoptive home. 

The Artisans

Knots & Stones promotes and supports fair trade practices. We work with artisans in Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. The artisants that work with us set their own work hours and wages, and they also sell (or try) their own products in local markets.  Most of them work in small cooperatives or workshops, generally made-up of family and neighbors and this job provides the only source of income. For example, in Colombia the workshop employs ten people on a full-time basis, six of which are single mothers working to provide for their family.  We are very proud of the quality of their work and happy to be able to bring their skills and products to the attention of a larger market.

Our Materials

The seeds used to make our jewelry are sustainably harvested from the rainforest of South America and are a natural alternative to the platic beads.  The seeds are harvested naturally, when they fall to the ground instead of traumatizing the tree by climbing it to retrieve its seeds.  The tagua trees cultivated will, in turn, provide valuable habitat to rain forest animals and other fauna that exists on the forest floor.

By harvesting the tagua nuts and creating consumer products from them, the survival of these tracts of rainforests is guaranteed. You see, as long as money can be made from standing trees, then it makes sense to leave them standing (instead of cutting them down for lumber, which has only short-term economic gain).
Local villagers are able to support their families by creating a tagua nut trade.

The plant grows in wild form, which means that the plantations were not programmed nor seeded.  The plant produces uninterruptedly every year for even centuries.  It offers 3 harvests per year approximately.  It is calculated that a specimen of two meters of high does not have less than 35 to 40 years of age.   The plant well developed can produce 15 to 16 heads annually, also known like mocochas. In each mococha are collected approximately 20 seeds of fruit.

Our line of acessories differ from other custom jewelry lines because they offer the following benefits:

• community-based harvesting and processing of raw materials;
• immediate economic benefits to rainforest communities;
• our raw materials derive from the world's richest and most threatened rainforests

Support of Local Social Enterprises

Locally (NYC/USA), we try to use value-led vendors when outsourcing work, for example, the majority of our printing is done by Workforce Enterprises, a New York based social enterprise offering a unique workforce development training and job placement program for unemployed and under-employed workers facing barriers to employment within a commercial print shop setting.

Tagua Nut, also known as Vegetable Ivory, Corozo/Corrozzo, Binroji Nut (Japan), Coquilla (Brazil).

A tagua nut is the fruit of a palm tree, Phytelephas Macrocarpa, which flourishes in tropical rain forests .

Tagua is viewed as a sustainable alternative to ivory derived from animals, and responsible cultivation and harvesting of tagua also helps with rain forest conservation in South America. Our Tagua nuts are gathered after the nuts naturally mature and fall from the tree – this way no harm is done to the tree. By using vegetable ivory products, you are helping in the conservation of the rainforests and the planet’s biodiversity as it also protects elephants, walruses, and other ivory bearing animals.