The earliest history of Gustav Reyes’s wooden rings is not preserved in a single document. It survives in fragments: Etsy account records, buyer reviews, correspondence, old website files, camera metadata, product records, and photographs carried forward from one generation of the studio to another.
One fragment now establishes the beginning with unusual clarity. Etsy records show that Reyes joined the platform on November 17, 2005 under the shop name craftsman. The oldest listing in that shop is #45426, “Birch Wood Ring Cleansing Herb Wedding Band.” A five-star buyer review dated December 30, 2005 confirms that the ring had already been purchased, received, and evaluated by then; a second five-star review followed on January 4, 2006.
The listing is important for more than its date. It describes the ring as hand formed from thin layers of wood selected for grain and durability, and states that the wood carries meaning beyond its physical traits. Birch is linked to birth, new beginnings, protection, and purification. The structural and symbolic concerns that would continue through Reyes’s later work are therefore already visible in the first Etsy listing.
Birch Wood Ring Cleansing Herb Wedding Band
craftsman · Etsy · 2005
Reyes joined Etsy on November 17, 2005. This is the oldest listing in his Craftsman shop. A five-star review dated December 30, 2005 confirms that the ring had already been purchased and received by then; a second five-star review followed on January 4, 2006.
The listing describes the ring as hand formed from thin layers of wood chosen for grain and durability, while also assigning symbolic meaning to the material. Birch is associated with birth, new beginnings, protection, and purification.
By January 14, 2006, surviving correspondence links directly to a later Etsy listing, #57306, and the Craftsman Etsy shop. Only weeks later, a surviving web banner dated February 1, 2006 carries the name Simply Natural Wood Rings and the phrase “objects that justify their own creation.” By the summer of that year, a small online store was operating through ancientwoodring.com. A surviving July record shows a design called Two Lovers and an Acorn already in use.
The earliest standalone ring photograph recovered with original camera dating was made on December 21, 2006. It shows a laminated wooden band with a light inner liner. No surviving source identifies its design name or wood species, and the archive does not assign one.
writersrings.jpg. The correspondence does not explain the filename, so the archive preserves it without assigning an interpretation.
walnutwooddiamond300.jpg. The exact material specifications have not yet been independently verified.
The photographs that follow from 2007 and 2008 show rapid development: laminated construction becomes visually explicit; pale and dark woods are combined; raised settings appear; and the ring begins to move away from a conventional band. By 2008, The Key is already operating as both ring and small sculpture.
What began as a structural problem — how to make a wooden ring strong enough to live on the body — had become a way of thinking through material, form, symbolism, and value. The transition into contemporary art jewelry was not a sudden departure from Simply Wood Rings. It was already occurring inside it.