Look out! Watch where you step because there, under your hiking boots, is the raw material for art. Grubs, beetles, discarded seed pods, knotted roots . . . art? Yes, and not just art, wearable art. Jewelry, created in precious metals, rich enamels and gemstones, the likes of which will astonish you. Meet David C. Freda, a naturalist, artist and jeweler who finds not only inspiration but subject matter in the deep woods and warm beaches around San Clemente, California.

Not long ago, while biking through those woods, David happened on a burned-out clearing. His eyes scanning the terrain (as always) David noticed that the ground was littered with small, cottony white discs. The smallest were barely dime-sized, the largest nearly half-dollar-sized. It turned out that the slightly concaved objects were trapdoors, built by trapdoor spiders to camouflage their homes. The fire, as it swept across the little hatchways, literally blew them off their hinges.

One of the homeless spiders now lives in David’s home under a brand new trapdoor. One day, David says, the inspiration will strike and he’ll know exactly what kind of jewelry will feature that spider and its trapdoor. “The ideas are in there,” he knows, “maturing slowly. It can take up to five years to think of the right project for an item.”

And such items—David has created pendants inspired by stag beetle grubs and the raspberries they feast on. He has sculpted plants complete with burlap-wrapped potting. He has designed 6-inch brooches based on mythical fish bristling with astonishing weaponry.

Today, with molds he made of living flowers, David is casting orchids in 22-karat gold and hand-painting each delicate flower with Japanese leaded enamels. The transparent enamels wash the high-karat gold in deep, rich color without obscuring the fine details captured in the gold casting. Curves, folds, even delicate veining, show through the enamel in amazingly lifelike reproduction. You reach to run your finger along a petal just to make sure it isn’t really a flower. David smiles; he loves that “the viewer has to look just a little closer to discover what’s there.”