About Us

Karats began long before it had a name.

It began in the hands of Daniel Telleen—in the quiet discipline of making, in a lifelong curiosity about where objects come from, and what they carry with them through time.

Raised in Iowa and formally trained in art, Telleen’s early path was structured, even traditional. He taught. He studied. He followed the expected trajectory—until something deeper called him away from it. Not toward commerce, but toward meaning.

In 1970, he arrived in Vail.

There, in the mountains, Karats took root—not as a store, but as an idea:
that jewelry could hold memory. That materials—ancient coins, fossilized bone, meteorites older than the earth itself—were not inert, but alive with story.

From the beginning, Karats was different. It was not built on trend or ornamentation, but on reverence. Telleen’s work became a meditation on continuity—each piece a quiet dialogue between past, present, and what is yet to come.

Over decades, that singular vision began to draw others.

Not followers, but kindred spirits; Artists whose work, like Telleen’s, exists in conversation with time.

From the deeply elemental creations of Carolyn Tyler—crafted in Bali, where sea-worn relics, ancient forms, and opalized fossils emerge as if unearthed from another world…

To the sculptural force of Steve Tobin, whose work channels the raw architecture of nature itself…

And the enduring presence of the late Koji Kawamoto, whose pearls—collected over a lifetime—speak to patience, devotion, and the slow creation of beauty.

Together, these voices shaped Karats into what it is today:

Not a gallery in the traditional sense,
but a convergence.

A place where jewelry is not simply worn, but experienced—where each piece carries the weight of where it has been, and the quiet promise of where it will go next.

At Karats, the past is never gone.
It is held. Transformed. Passed on.

And at its center, still, is the hand of the maker—
shaping time into something that can be lived with.