How One Jewelry Maker Captures the Untamed Spirit of Texas in a Dazzling Tribute to Her Family's Ranch

Sallie Lewis, Veranda Magazine
January/February 2026 Issue

Inside a historic telephone “Bellhouse” in San Antonio is an alchemist’s laboratory, shimmering with 18-karat gold, multicolored sapphires, and translucent tourmalines. Moroccan lanterns and Asian furnishings whisper of long stretches spent abroad. It’s a fitting home for Cultus Artem, the atelier founded by the creative powerhouse Holly Tupper, whose recent fine jewelry collection—a capsule entitled The Flats— debuted in November and includes roughly 25 pieces inspired by the landscape of her late husband’s third-generation Southwest Texas ranch.

“We’ve spent a lot of time there, working on everything from soil reclamation to native grass programs, hydrology, and water diversion,” she says. Foraging is an ardent pastime. “I’m like a magpie. When I walk, I’m looking for everything—arrowheads, crystals, fossilized shells.”

Rooms with a view

The ranch’s myriad dwellings tell generational stories. In an O’Neil Ford–designed home dubbed “The Museum,” there are pieces collected from all over: a salvaged vintage Mexican piñata, equipale chairs, and an old Western saddle from cowboying days. In a bedroom, bookshelves are filled with family heirlooms and folk art.

This latest assemblage of jewels celebrates the land’s raw, subtle beauty. Gold is molded in the spirit of a metal screen (below) that was “long-buried beneath the windswept land” or etched to echo the curves of sidewinder rattlesnakes; glimmering garnets evoke prairie verbena in bloom. “The name for this collection was inspired by the flat topical geography of the ranch,” Tupper says. “What looks like a barren landscape is actually teeming with life.”

Fields of study

Skeletal mesquites make fine company for Tupper, who takes note of earthen hues and tactile textures to inspire her designs. “To the untrained eye, the desert environment is deeply brown,” she says. “But then there’s a glimpse…a piece of shimmering mica in the soil, prickly pear tunas that pop with color.” Red spinel crystals gleam with these memories in a golden locket (below) that safeguards a porcelain disc, which can be infused with a Cultus Artem fragrance.

Discover The Flats Collection