Cut from First Principles: The Story Behind Maikurumoto Gems
My first faceted pieces were not gemstones. They were resin and acrylic, cut by hand on sandpaper laid over a 4 by 4 inch granite coaster in my art studio. Four pieces took roughly 100 hours, one of them upwards of 40 on its own. I had no machine and no angle guide, only the refractive index and critical angle of the resin I was working with and facet angles estimated by eye.
That was 2022. "Cut from first principles" is the line on my website, and this is where it comes from. The short version lives on my About page. This is the long one.
From sculpture to facets
In 2019 I started a new series of aluminum and epoxy sculptures, the Equivocal Exoplanets and Ambiguous Artifacts. Resin was part of the process and part of the finish. Molding and casting it led me to sanding it, and sanding it led me to faceting it. One step pulled the next.
By the time I was hand cutting those four pieces, I was also researching everything I could find about faceting: machines, laps, gem rough, design, and the physics of how light moves through a stone.
The long way to the machine
Faceting has a real cost of entry, and it adds up fast. I spent a long time looking for the cheapest way in. After nearly a year and a half of that, my wife and I decided to go the other direction: industry leading equipment and supplies, and instruction from someone who had already mastered the craft.
In June 2023 I spent four days in Ithaca, New York, learning from Mark Oros of Hashnu Stones and Gems.
The first two stones
My first stone was a citrine. I chose a modified round brilliant from three design options, because the round brilliant is the fundamental design every cutter has to master. To the naked eye it holds up against anything I cut today. Under a 10x loupe, a few micro scratches show where I overused polishing slurry at the time. That is the only tell.
The second, cut over the last two days of the lesson, was a rose de France amethyst. The design was a square, cut corner stone with fantasy elements: notches etched into the girdle to form a flower, and frosted edges for texture. It came out beautifully, and I left Ithaca feeling great about what came next.
Both stones are permanent keepsakes. Neither is for sale.
Two months on my own
With Mark's help (he is an Ultratec representative), I had already ordered my own Ultratec V5 and laps, along with a 12-stone practice parcel. I worked through part of it. Then my eagerness got ahead of the plan, and I set the 12-stone book aside to cut the most interesting and complicated designs I could find online. There were thousands to choose from. I owe a great deal to the designers whose work I learned on, including Arya Akhavan, Marco Voltolini, Phan Thanh Trung, Robert Long, and Fred Van Sant, among many others.
Within two months of cutting on my own, I made my first sale. That sale turned into a commission, and that commission is still one of the best stones I have ever cut: a 6 carat Pakistani peridot, eye-clean with a rich green color, now set in an 18k gold bypass ring.
Nights, weekends, and a full-time career
None of this happened in place of a day job. For my first two years at the machine I cut nights and weekends around a full-time career in program and project management, a field I have worked in since 2008. Most of it was in regulated life sciences and translation. The last of it was leading localization at Thermo Fisher Scientific, where diagnostic labeling went out in 28 languages and a mistake carried real consequences. My days were timelines, technical content, and vendors. My evenings were at the lap.
The two turned out to be the same discipline. Every commission I take on runs like a small project: clear scope, honest expectations up front, updates in whatever form the client prefers, and delivery when I said it would arrive. I learned that part of the job long before I cut my first stone.
Why Maikurumoto
Maikurumoto was my pseudonym long before it was a gem business. I have used it for my fine art and my martial arts for years. Gem cutting felt like the next chapter of the same work rather than a new identity, so the name came with it.
"Maikuru" is my version of "Maikeru," the way Michael is most commonly pronounced in Japanese. "Moto" is an homage to Miyamoto Musashi, the swordsman, painter, and author of The Book of Five Rings. Musashi was both an artist and a martial artist, and his writing on discipline and mastering a craft has stayed with me for years.
My interest in Japan started in 10th grade, at a large public high school of over 2,000 students, when I met a Japanese exchange student. The level of respect and energy that student carried stood out from everything around me. That sparked my interest in Japanese culture, music, and language, and eventually led me to Rochester Institute of Technology, where I studied industrial design and took Japanese through the advanced level.
I did not visit Japan until a couple of years ago, decades after that first spark. What stays with me is how deeply shokunin, the spirit of the craftsman who devotes a life to doing the work well, runs through everything. It shows in the person sweeping the ground in front of their home or shop, and in the craftspeople making everything from architecture to chef knives. Being there felt like being immersed in greatness at every level.
A black belt, and a color belt
I started training in Kyokushin karate in January 2010 at the age of 24. Over seven years I fought in 20 competitions, and I have trained and competed internationally. I earned my black belt from Shihan Rene Cruz at Muteki Kyokushin of Rochester, NY in 2016. The test included 27 consecutive bare-knuckle rounds. I am currently a first-degree black belt.
That experience shapes how I see my place in gem cutting. Three years and more than 150 stones in, I am much faster, more efficient, and more trusting of the machine than when I started, and I am still experimenting with new materials, processes, designs, and types of projects. In karate terms, I am a color belt: roughly halfway to black, with a lot still to learn. I am proud of how far I have come, and clear about how far there is to go.
What this means for your stone
Every client is an individual, and I want each of them to feel seen. When you send me your rough or ask me to cut something for you, you are trusting someone you may never have met with your money, your time, and often a stone that matters to you.
My goal is simple. Years from now, when you look at your stone, I want you to feel the same joy you felt the first time, and to be glad you trusted me with it. Being allowed to do what I love to make something special for you is an honor, and I treat it like one.
If you have rough of your own, or a stone in mind, get in touch. I reply myself.
Michael Phillips
Founder & Gemcutter, Maikurumoto Gems LLC
Sturbridge, Massachusetts