ABOUT · OUR STORY

Our story

Wenu Mapu — upper land, sky world. Born in Wallmapu, southern Chile, in the lineage of Mapuche silverwork — now forging body jewelry by hand from a small workshop in Truckee, California. By appointment and worldwide shipping.

WHAT WE HOLD SACRED

Tribal jewelry, connected to the cosmos.

Geometry borrowed from the sky, worn close to the body — each piece a threshold between the world above and the one you carry.

Our values

What we hold sacred.

  • Handforged, or not at all.

    One maker, one bench. No middlemen, no borrowed shelves, no mass production. Every piece is filed, hammered and finished by the same hands that drew it.

  • Noble matter only.

    Titanium, silver, gold, stone, meteorite. Materials chosen because they age with grace and stay safe in the body — never for being cheap.

  • Worn as passage.

    A piece is not a product but an object of passage: something you wear to remember who you are, where you come from, what you are becoming.

01 · Story

From Wallmapu to the Sierra Nevada.

Wenu Mapu was born in Chile, in the silver. Its founder came up through industrial design and then orfebrería — a municipal goldsmithing workshop, basic to advanced, ending in Mapuche silverwork — earned a state craft grant and tools, kept learning at the Ruka in La Cisterna, and went on to teach the techniques to those just beginning. The name itself is cosmology: Wenu Mapu, the world above. Today the work continues by hand — titanium, silver, gold, wood, stone, meteorite — from a small studio in Truckee, California.

Our pieces are not products. They are objects of passage: things you wear close to the body to remember who you are, where you come from, what you are becoming.

Every piece leaves the studio touched only by the hands that made it. No middlemen. No borrowed shelves.

02 · Materials

Noble materials only.

  • Implant-grade titanium

    ASTM F-136. Used in all our piercing pieces. Bio-compatible, hypo-allergenic, lifetime safe in the body.

  • Sterling silver 925

    92.5% pure silver. For amulets, rings, hangers and ear weights. Ages with grace.

  • Gold 14k

    58% pure gold alloy. Reserved for commissions and signature pieces. Warm, durable, heirloom-grade.

  • Atacama meteorite

    Vaca Muerta mesosiderite from Chile's Atacama Desert. Each fragment is over 4 billion years old. Limited and one-of-a-kind.

  • Stone & wood

    Labradorite, fluorite, obsidian, palo santo, lignum vitae. Selected for ritual resonance.

  • Brass & bronze

    Ceremonial metals worked for weight, patina and presence in hangers, ear weights and ritual objects.

03 · Artistry

Hand-forged. One at a time.

We don't outsource. We don't mass-produce. Every piece is filed, hammered, polished and finished in our Truckee workshop by the same hands that designed it.

This is why our drops are small. Why some pieces take months. Why a one-of-a-kind sells once and becomes a memory.

Commissions →

04 · Presence

Where we meet the work in person.

Wenu Mapu is 100% online from Truckee, with private appointments, local pickup and occasional pop-ups. Current and recurring presences:

  • Truckee, California — workshop visits by appointment
  • Reno, Nevada — quarterly piercing pop-ups (next: TBD)
  • Mapuche craft markets in southern Chile — annual return

Private appointments →

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JOIN THE CIRCLE

First to know.

New pieces are forged one at a time and often gone in days. Join the circle for early access, ritual notes, and the occasional offering — nothing else.

Join the circle

The signup lives on the home page.