Sarah Palin jokes may be Alaska's most popular recent export. But, jewelry designer Jennifer Belton has been shuttling between Stamford and Seward's Folly for the past year to mine something other than comedic gold.

Belton, who recently opened JB Dzyne just minutes from her North Stamford home, creates what she describes as "natural, sculpted jewelry" out of fragments of ivory that have spent centuries buried in the arctic permafrost. Her tiny studio/shop is hidden in one of the city's most affluent neighborhoods. There she displays one-of-a-kind rings and pendants that weave gold, silver and platinum around materials like fossilized mammoth bones and thousand-year-old walrus tusks.

Belton does very little to alter the ivory before she incorporates it into her jewelry. "I like the raw, organic aspect of it," she explains. She hastens to point out that none of her creations use elephant ivory and that no animals are harmed in the harvesting of her materials. Instead, the richly caramel and ocher colored shards are sold to her by Native Alaskans who are allowed to unearth them from the state's protected lands. "I would love to go and dig for them myself, but I'd get arrested," she says with a laugh.

Jennifer Belton wears sloping auburn bangs and cat's-eye frames that hint at how Palin might look if she spent less time at Neiman Marcus and more browsing the boutiques of lower Manhattan. And the designer's artistic sensibility is every bit as hip. Many of the pieces in Belton's collection suggest medieval Celtic or Nordic artifacts that have been given a modern vibe via their highly-polished, asymmetrical settings.

"I prefer when customers come in, pick out a piece of ivory and commission a custom design," Belton says. Completion of an item generally takes three weeks to a month from design to delivery. And surprisingly, given the current economy, Belton says that business has been brisk. If the folks at the McCain campaign had been half as successful at placing their Alaskan gem into the proper setting we might be looking at a very different White House.