WHEN Sarah Steele was a little girl she went to Whitby and found her first piece of jet. It was the start of a fascination with rocks and stones that led to her doing a degree in geology, a course in silver smithing and now she's making unique jet jewellery in her conservatory in York.

"The first trick was to learn the difference between jet and coal, which is quite difficult when you find it in its natural state. When I was about ten I went to a demonstration of jet at the National Trust shop in York and that was it."

By the time she was 13 she was making jet jewellery and selling it at school. After her geology degree, she knew she wanted to learn more about the craft too, hence the course in silver smithing.

The jewellery is a mixture of traditional and very modern, copies of Victorian pieces and unique, striking designs by Sarah herself.

As she talks, she carefully carves a tiny piece of jet into a copy of a Victorian pattern. It truly is time-consuming, painstaking work.

Some of her jewellery features ammonites set into the jet. Others feature bits of ivory from mammoths that roamed Siberia at least 10,000 years ago.

The jewellery is amazingly cheap, starting at a couple of pounds, but each piece comes with a detailed history of the jet, the ammonites or the Siberian mammoth.

"It makes it more interesting and means more to people," says Sarah's mum, Isobel Caldwell, who is also in the business, with Sarah's sister Victoria Recchia.

Americans are fascinated. They come and buy and back home they tell their friends to look out the jet jewellers.

Mother and daughters also make jewellery using amber but that stone is imported from Poland.

Each of the three women has a workshop in her house. Sarah fits her work in between looking after three small children. "We spend most of the week making jewellery and then go to fairs to sell it. But one day every week or two, we have to go back to Whitby and find more jet."

Back where it all started.

l Sarah, Isobel and Victoria will be at the craft fairs at St William's College York on Saturdays all this month, August Bank Holiday weekend and Sept 9 and 10.