A Business Built on Love and Family Tradition 

Love is the reason or so they say.  And in our case here at Cherokee Copper love is what started it all.  Well, you say of course it did. You are a family business after all. But there is so much more to levels of love involved. Perhaps the first love for Greg was the feeling he had staying at his grandparents' farm in Etowah,  Oklahoma. It was on that farm where he spent summers that he learned to create and fell in love with making beautiful things. Whether he was helping his grandfather build the farmhouse, cooking in the kitchen with his grandmother Pebble Ross, or learning to sew on Great Grandma Katy Ross's sewing machine.  It was on the farm that Greg learned to value true craftsmanship and fell in love with creating.

While in high school he had dreams of becoming an architect and building beautiful houses. Life is funny and Greg ending up changing his major, as many do. But it was on a summer internship  in Rhode Island that Greg met Lisa, that is a love story for another day. The story today is how Cherokee Copper came about. 

After Greg graduated college he found that Instead of building and making beautiful things, he was helping others build and create businesses, but something was missing. here was a need to make to create with his hands.

Greg and Lisa settled down and bought a 1955 farmhouse outside of Tulsa. It came with a barn, which was quickly filled with tools that came from the farmhouse in Etowah, OK. Woodworking was something that Greg has always loved. He started designing and making furniture in his barn. Working with his grandfather's tools, Greg felt connected to his past and his family creating pieces for his children and home. But again life has a way of pulling us in a different direction. A young family takes time as Greg was still building businesses and reading bedtime stories to his young girls he very little time for his creative pursuits in the barn. He started to look for a craft he could practice with his family. 

After trying several traditional Cherokee Crafts Greg settled into metalsmithing and jewelry. Cherokee Copper was started in the living room so that Greg could feed his need to create and be in the family fold. He quickly outgrew that space so a home office was turned into the new studio. 

Lisa was looking to start a  business in the fall of 2016.  She considered several options and then decided to take the start-up money and invest in Greg and make Cherokee Copper the business. She knew that others would love Greg's jewelry as much as she did.  Within one week of making that decision, she had the first designs for sale on Etsy with customers waiting. It wasn't long before the rest of the family joined Greg and Lisa making Cherokee  Copper a true family business. Today Greg and Lisa and their three children, design and make beautiful jewelry that is rooted in  Cherokee tradition. The family designs and makes award winning jewerly for the person who is looking to connect to Cherokee Culture. 

Cherokee Copper is a labor of love, started by love and nurtured by love. We love what we do and we feel that love when we see the smiles on our customers' faces.