About Us

From Abracadabra’s start during the 1973 Ann Arbor Art Fair, our business has always been locally and family owned and operated. Our brick and mortar doors opened at 205 East Liberty Street in 1976, when our founder, Wayne State alumnus Steven Lesse, expanded to include a full on-site shop for custom jewelry design and production, repairs, appraisals, and special order partnerships with fellow artists.

At Abracadabra, our highest priority is to ensure that every customer loves their jewelry by offering ethical, unique, heirloom-quality pieces. Since the beginning, we have been committed to jewelry made from recycled eco-metals and ethically-mined conflict-free gemstones, and we have been growing our collection to include laboratory-grown diamonds and non-traditional metals, with something for every style and budget!  To learn more about our values check out this page.

We are proud to offer a wide variety of unique and rare gemstones; including gems personally mined by our founder Steven, from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to Helena, Montana, and beyond. We love working with less conventional stones and alternative specimens, including American-grown hardwoods, Fordite, Petoskey stones, greenstone, and other materials that celebrate our Michigan home. The more unique, the better! 

Abra has always valued supporting independent artists and their work, which is why we strive to represent jewelry from local, national, and international jewelers, artists, and artisans. We use our showcase as a platform for like-minded artists to show and sell their stunning jewelry; including collections from five of our eight in-house team members.