Tim Garvin, a master of ceramics, is the creative mind behind this line of jewelry. He creates these porcelain pieces using an ancient technique known variously as millefiori, neriage, and nerikome. The extreme detail and intense color in his ceramic work results from the use of over 500 different colors of clay.

Millefiori, literally Italian for "thousand flowers," is a ancient technique of combining colored glass rods to make canes of color. Cross-sections were (and still are by artists throughout the world) sliced, combined, and used to create beads, paperweights, vases, etc. This technique was brought to high distinction on Murano, an island in the lagoon of Venice, in the middle ages but was used far earlier by the Romans and Egyptians, with some archeologists dating its inception as far back as the first millennium B.C. The use of colored clays in the same way, called neriage or nerikome in Japan, is a ceramic application of the technique. Here's a great link to the virtual Egyptian museum to explore this ancient art.