About Us

Our Company: founded in the 1970s by Patricia Frey, CharmWorks now includes three generations of our family. We are dedicated to making high quality original charms and pendants. From design to the finished product, every piece is made with love and pride right here in our shop in southern Arizona. 

Pat Frey: Self taught jeweler and founder of CharmWorks. As a sculptor that moved around a lot, she needed to scale her creations down to accommodate all the travel. So was born our parent company "Microsculptures". Skilled in many aspects of jewelry making and casting, she also developed the finishing methods that we use to get a superior shine on our charms. 

Rachel Frey: Pat's daughter joined the business in 1985 after earning a degree in fine art and graphic design. She covers the daily operations at CharmWorks, including production, assembly and customer service. Also a designer, Rachel enjoys creating pieces in metal rather than wax carving. 

Paula Frey: Pat's daughter, is a jack of all trades! She has been a firefighter, horse trainer, chiropractor and now a college professor. Paula has been designing charms for us in her spare time for many years. She is a skilled wax carver as well as an ardent knitter.

Daniel Frey: from 2017- 2019, Pat's grandson, Dan joined CharmWorks to build our new website. Thanks to his efforts we now have a beautiful online store. It was so much fun having him here for the two years it took. We all miss his exuberant energy!

In 2018, Pat's granddaughter, Christine came on board to help with creative photography and promotional ideas. She has a great eye for dramatic imagery and composition. We are so lucky to have her input.

Joe, Rachel's husband, is the handyman of the CharmWorks shop. From mechanical to electrical, he is our go to fix it man. 

Our Founder: Patricia Moore was born in 1934 in Manila in the Philippines to two Methodist missionaries. She spent her younger years learning and playing under relatively normal circumstances. Her childhood fun was abruptly cut short by the start of the Second World War. On December 8th, 1941 the Imperial Japanese Forces invaded and eventually captured the islands. All allied civilians were soon rounded up and placed in internment camps throughout the islands. Pat, her two brothers and her parents survived this harrowing experience in Los Baños from 1942 until February 23rd, 1945 when they were rescued during a raid carried out by Philippine Guerrillas and the U.S. Army's 11th Airborne Division. The image below shows airborne troops preparing for the raid. 

After the war, Pat's affinity for tools and craftsmanship grew and grew. She attended UC Berkeley for a time, studying art history where she began to develop her sculpting skills by making busts and statues. Her marriage to career Army officer Jesse Frey gave her the opportunity to live in new parts of the world and learn new things. In the 1960s while he was stationed in Germany, she visited the Jewelry Museum in Pforzheim. She was filled with wonder and inspiration by the marriage of sculpture and beauty in the jewelry. Shortly thereafter, she began acquiring tools and the knowledge to make her own jewelry. 

By the 1970s Pat had turned her hobby into a career she loved opening her first store in a mall kiosk in North Carolina. The life of an Army wife kept her on the move and she would soon have two stores in the Boston, Massachusetts area. The final Army move brought her and her family to southern Arizona where the business resides to this day. At this point, Pat's daughter Rachel joined the business and it became feasible to move larger scale casting operations in house. They approached Jeff Bowie (who did all of their casting work) and he taught them everything he knew before selling all of his casting equipment to CharmWorks. We cast on this equipment to this day.   

At 87 years old she rarely misses the opportunity to do the thing she loves most, and can almost always be found at her desk listening to classical music and sculpting a new charm design.