Last month I spent a week in Emporia, Kansas. I'd never heard of the town before, and when I looked it up on a map and saw how far it was from any major city, I was a little worried about spending a whole week there. I could not have been more wrong.

GRS is a major American manufacturer of jewelry and engraving tools, based in Emporia, and they have a world-class education facility attached to their manufacturing plant, with multiple classrooms, all fully equipped with jewelry benches and more tools than I knew what to do with. It's kind of a rite of passage for jewelers to take engraving and stone setting classes there. I've watched jewelers I follow take classes at GRS for years and come out the other side with skills that felt like a completely different level of craft.

I've been mostly self-taught, and I've taken very few serious jewelry courses. But with my transition into fine jewelry, I kept hitting walls. Real ones. So at the end of last year I vowed I'd take a class at GRS in summer 2026. I even put a reminder in my calendar for the day registration opened.

That day came and went while I was traveling and still celebrating my 40th birthday, and I completely forgot to sign up. By the time I remembered, six days later, every class I wanted was already full. Sadness. I put my name on a waitlist and moved on with my life.

But dear reader, in June I got an email: a waitlist spot had opened in the Combination Course for Jewelers with Todd Daniels. Did I want it? I did not hesitate. I put down a $500 deposit and then had a very short window to figure out a flight, a rental car, and somewhere to stay in the middle of Kansas for a week.

The Stay

I booked a room at the Gufler Mansion, a bed and breakfast in the middle of town. Built in 1917, with so much of its original character still intact. I stayed in the Spanish Room, a peaceful corner room on the second floor with a clawfoot tub all to myself, and, I was told, a room where President Herbert Hoover once stayed. Twice. The chef, Julia, made me a beautiful breakfast every morning to start the day right.

My favorite detail in the whole house: this carved mantle line, "not for wealth, rank, or honor." A funny, fitting thing to read every morning during a week spent hunched over a bench trying to get better at something for its own sake.

This little engraved brass plate sits in the mansion's parlor. I was told it was likely made by a student from nearby Emporia State University. A nice bit of foreshadowing for the week ahead.

The Land

I grew up in Missouri, but left the Midwest in 2004: bopping around from Chicago to New York to Portland and LA, and now the desert has been my home for the last five years. I forgot what Midwest summer actually feels like: hot, humid, and unbelievably lush. The trees are so full they look like they're trying to hold something in. At night the cicadas come alive, that thick electric hum I hadn't heard in years and didn't realize I missed.

On my last day in Kansas, before I had to catch my flight home, my mom and I drove out through the prairie, and the sky did that thing it only does out there, huge puffy clouds stacked up over the Flint Hills, everything rolling and impossibly green. After years of desert light and mountain views, it was a genuinely nice send-off. A reminder that "home" has more than one definition for me now.

The Class

GRS classes run 40 hours: 8am to 5pm, Monday through Friday. My instructor was Todd Daniels, a master jeweler and engraver who has been making jewelry for as long as I've been alive. He was humble, kind, and made complex skills look effortless.

The first two and a half days were all engraving fundamentals. One of the more intimidating parts was learning to shape gravers, using different angles and geometries to get different results. Traditionally you sharpen gravers by hand and eye on flat diamond stones and rely on the strength of your own hands and arms to push the tool and lift the metal. I've tried it. It is hard, and I was not good at it.

GRS has built tools to make that whole process more approachable: a motorized Graver Hone with fixtures that set the perfect angle, and the Gravermach AT, an air-powered engraving system driven by foot or hand pressure instead of brute force.

My first cuts were rough. Embarrassingly rough: too deep, no control, sliding all over the place. By the end of day one we were shown how to transfer a design onto a metal plate and engrave flowers. Mine were passable. That's the bar and I'll take it.

Days two and three built on that: more gravers, engraved patterns, some lettering. I loved watching the patterns come together and learning different lettering styles. The days went by fast, faster than I expected.

By the end of day three we pivoted to stone setting, combining the engraving skills and tools we'd just learned. Todd had endless tips and tricks, 40 years of hard-won lessons, generously shared. We practiced flush, channel, prong, star, and bead setting, all made easier with air-powered tools I genuinely appreciated. Someday, when I have the money, I'm buying all the nice equipment. Until then, I'll keep daydreaming and getting by with my knockoffs and DIY setups.

The class was intense in the best way. I found myself wishing I had more than 40 hours. There was so much packed into so little time. I stayed late a couple of nights trying to catch up and still didn't finish everything. But that's part of what I love about jewelry: your skills build on each other endlessly, and there's always more room to grow if you want it.

Being in a Room With Other People

It was genuinely great to be in a classroom again, around other people. So much of my working life is solitary. I made a couple of friends I explored the town with, and Emporia turned out to be one of the most charming small towns I've spent time in. Great food, too: Hagaya Ramen Shop, Central Station (Mexican/El Salvador food truck), and Radius Brewing Company.

My mom even drove out from Missouri for a couple of nights and sat in on some classes with me, staying at the mansion too.

The Verdict

I'd rate the week a 10/10, easily the best week of my summer, even though it landed sandwiched between two separate illnesses and I wasn't at 100% the whole time. Still, this class was a highlight of 2026. It cracked something open for me. Now I just want to take more classes. Fifteen years into jewelry making, and there is still so much to learn. I'm currently revamping my studio to build a real engraving and stone-setting bench (built it myself, from scratch), and I'm hoping to practice enough to start folding these skills into future work.

A shoutout to the women I spent the week with:

Kat Kramer, who I can only describe as a jill of all trades. She teaches Z-Brush for jewelers, among many other things, and was a total natural at both engraving and stone setting.

Emma Brooke, who makes the most incredible kinetic fine jewelry, little moving works of art. If we'd both been in Portland at the same time, I have no doubt we'd have been friends.

Alex Hume of North Star Jewelry, a mother of two like me, who I had some really parallel conversations with about jewelry and life. Talking with her about her kids and her life on Lake Superior was a real bright spot in the week.