About Parle

Learn About the brand

Most jewelry brands begin with a sketch. Parlé began with a mine. Frank Farnsworth founded it in May 1973 in Pocatello, Idaho as Idaho Opal & Gems, digging opal out of the ground at Spencer and cutting it himself. A trip to the Tucson gem show in 1976 opened the door to Australian material, and the company has been chasing exceptional colored stones ever since.

The name came in 1991. Parlé is French for "to speak," chosen because the family believes a good gemstone tells you something before any setting does. The house phrase for it is that the gemstone is always the hero, and you can see that discipline in the work: settings built to hold and light a stone rather than to compete with it.

Three generations in, it is still the same family. Frank's son Jonathan and his wife Brecken run it now, and Brecken does the designing and sources the stones on buying trips herself, which is unusual at this scale and is why the material is consistently better than the price suggests. Everything happens under one roof in Pocatello: CAD, casting, goldsmiths and staff gemologists.

Opal is the specialty, Australian and Idaho, alongside Montana sapphire, tanzanite, ruby and emerald. Opal also asks a little more of its owner than a diamond does, being a softer, more sensitive stone, and we will tell you exactly how to look after one before you leave with it.

Gray's Jewelers Bespoke is an authorized Parlé retailer. Come see the color in our Saint James showroom.