From her grandfather’s watchmaking bench to a working Rubik’s Cube in solid silver, Jenn Rachinsky Breznen has built Mined + Found around a simple idea — joy, like jewellery, is often hidden in the smallest, most unexpected details.
Jenn Rachinsky Breznen grew up in Fairfield County, Connecticut, spending much of her childhood at her grandparents’ house nearby, a place she describes less as a home than an archive. “My grandfather was a collector of everything, and going to their house was like being inside an I Spy book,” she says. “It was almost like a museum. He had all these interesting antique objects and his watchmaking bench, and being able to play and tinker and see all of these little mechanisms was fascinating.”
At E.W. Martin Watchmaker, young Jenn would build tiny characters out of loose watch gears and clock hands. “I think I can attribute my appreciation for mechanics to that,” she shares.
Her grandfather, Edward Martin, was an independent, self-taught watchmaker who serviced the surrounding community, a detail Jenn and her husband later confirmed by chance. “We actually found one of his old logbooks,” she recalls. “He would log who the customer was, where they lived, their telephone number, what he was taking.” Thumbing through it, they even recognised the name of a friend’s grandfather.
Jenn’s mother, Laura Martin, supplied the other half of the brand’s DNA: a lifelong passion for minerals and gemstones. “It was initially more of the metaphysical side of things, but it became a larger, more geological interest,” the designer says. Growing up, crystals and specimens covered the mantle and windowsills and her mother would bring her along to gem shows across upstate Connecticut, and New York and the surrounding areas, “but never to Tucson. I promised her I could return the favour and bring her there. I’m hoping for 2027.”
Jenn studied studio art at Norwalk Community College in Connecticut, and worked at David Harvey Jewelers, a local jewellery and watchmaking store that her mother encouraged her to apply to. She started sweeping counters and indexing inventory; thirteen years later, she was the store’s lead buyer, attending Couture, Centurion, Las Vegas, and Baselworld, and working directly with Rolex. “I do attribute a lot of my knowledge and understanding of the finer workings of the industry, and what it means to be a retailer, to that experience.”
Mined + Found began in 2019, with Jenn resetting and rehoming antique jewellery for private clients, before the pandemic reshaped it entirely. “It really was a wake-up call, that my passion is in a more artistic, creative side of a career,” she says. Profits from each reset funded the next idea. “Any time I made a little bit of money, I just reinvested it right back into the next thing, and fortunately it worked out.”
The brand’s origin story, and its name, trace to a rainbow silk piece she developed with a friend during lockdown. “It’s such a simple concept, to have a continuous rainbow on fine jewellery silk, but it had not been done or brought to market yet.” She’d deliver finished strands to family, “ring the doorbell and run back to the car,” leaving a note: “there’s always a rainbow to be found.”
Mined + Found is a play on words, antique generation and gemstones, but it also has a deeper meaning, she explains. “The brand is very joyful and has a lot of these hidden details, and that’s just like life. Some days joy is easily found. Other days you have to dig a little deeper.”
The brand’s first 14-karat gold collection, Useful Objects, reimagined Victorian chatelaines, the utility belts women once clipped to their skirts, stripped of literal function and reloaded with symbolism: a matchbox holding one match as an emblem of hope, a pocketknife as “an ode to letting go.”
The Play collection followed, built around spinning tops, whistles, and gachapon lockets. “Every day is, in my opinion, the most unappreciated and undervalued special occasion. Objects carry memory.” Pieces are made in 18-karat gold on request, shares the designer, who only uses natural diamonds and natural gems to embellish her creations. For colour, she leans into a bit of ombré and multicolour sapphires, as well as tsavorite garnets and amethysts for more vibrant shades of green and purple.
Production splits roughly evenly between the United States and a Responsible Jewelry Council–certified atelier in Thailand, chosen through a consultant.
Mechanism-heavy pieces are prototyped first in resin or sterling silver, “to make sure the mechanisms are the appropriate scale, and the piece itself is proportionally correct.” None tested that process more than the Odyssey Cube, the brand’s working Rubik’s Cube in miniature. “It was a solid, massive block of silver, completely unwieldy and heavy, but we had to, because it’s such a complex mechanism inside.” There’s over 50 parts, each has to work in unison in order for the cube to move, she informs.
Anticipating client repairs, she and her husband, John, raced to learn to solve it themselves. “I’m proud to say I learned first,” she adds. Their partnership runs through Mined + Found. The duo met at Jenn’s old retail job, where John Breznen managed operations. “He’s truly my business partner, not just the spouse that gets roped in to work for free for the week. He knows more than I do about this industry,” shares Jenn.
The brand’s Star Stuff collection returns with 22 new pieces this season, alongside fresh additions to Play and a new engraved finish, proof that for Mined + Found, there’s always another rainbow to find.