Kevin Potter, a jeweler based in Tucson, Arizona, has assembled the world's largest collection of artifacts from America's industrial jewelry manufacturing era. His collection, housed in two warehouses, contains an estimated 1.2 million hubs and dies—the hand-carved steel tools used to mass-produce jewelry through die-striking—along with related machinery and ephemera, preserving a vast physical archive of a vanished craft.
This collection matters because it safeguards the tangible history and immense artistry of a major American industry that is now largely forgotten. The tools, each representing 40 to 100 hours of skilled labor, tell the story of how jewelry was made before digital technology, highlighting the craftsmanship of hubs like those for military medals and popular brooches. Potter's archive serves as a crucial record of the techniques, labor, and regional industrial dominance, particularly of Rhode Island, that intimately connected with millions of lives through sentimental objects.