Meet Ivo, Founder Of Crystal Skulls Brazil

---

I’m Ivo Fuijkschot. I’ve been working with crystal skulls for more than 25 years, and I’ve been selling and exhibiting them around the world since 2008. In 2019 I moved to Minas Gerais, the part of Brazil where most of these crystals come out of the ground, so I could be close to the source.

A lot of shops will tell you about ancient legends, or make a big deal of who carved a skull. But that’s not really what I look at. What matters to me is the skull itself: the stone, the design, how well it’s carved and finished, and the kind of energy and character it has. And then there’s the connection. The skulls people keep are usually the ones they felt drawn to and end up living with for years.

Living here, I get to see a lot more skulls than I could ever put in the shop. So I pick. I hold them, I look at the stone and the carving, I pay attention to how a piece feels, and I keep the ones that are actually worth keeping. After that, my job is just to get it to you safely, wherever you are in the world.

I can do this because of a mix that’s very rare to find: real experience with the spiritual side of these skulls, years of running this as a proper business and standing at trade shows, good English, years of dealing with international buyers, and the fact that I actually live here at the source. I’ll tell you more about all of this below.

Where this started

Long before I started selling skulls, I just kept them. My first one really found me in 1997, at a workshop with John Armitage, who created the Shamballa healing system. He had a smoky quartz skull called George. I held it through a long meditation and something happened that I couldn’t explain and didn’t try to. This experience stayed with me, and I started collecting not long after.

If you spend enough years with enough skulls, you stop seeing them as the same object carved over and over. You start noticing how different they are. Some of it is easy to see: the clarity of the stone, how the light moves in it, whether the carving has a real face or just two eye sockets. Some of it isn’t.

About 22 years ago I was looking to buy one online and found Damian Quinn, an American gemologist living in Brazil, one of the first people to export Brazilian skulls. One piece stopped me. A name turned up in my head before I’d decided anything: Solomon. A smoky quartz, long head, full of rainbows. He’s still with me today.

The strange part is that I now live in the same city where Damian lived and where Solomon was carved. I brought him back to where he was made without ever planning to. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. To me it’s a sign I’m where I’m meant to be, doing what I’m meant to do.

How the selling started

I came to this as a collector first, not a shop, and it stayed that way for a long time. It started small in 2008, with a little website I built myself, done on the side of a corporate job because I couldn’t leave the subject alone. It changed names more than once while I worked out what it was.

In 2012 I finally left the corporate job behind and dedicated myself fully to this work.

For years I wasn’t only selling online. I exhibited at the world’s largest gem shows: Tucson, Denver, Munich, Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, and smaller ones in the Netherlands and Germany. Standing behind a table full of skulls, I watched the same thing happen over and over. Someone picks up ten skulls, puts nine back without thinking, then stops at the tenth and goes quiet. They can’t usually say why. Something clicks, and the skull won’t let them leave without it. I’ve seen this more times than I can count.

By now I’ve found homes for well over a thousand skulls, in more than fifteen countries, and many of those collectors have been coming back for years.

Years of selling also taught me the practical side properly: how to pack crystal so it survives international shipping, how to choose the right carrier, and how to prepare the paperwork so a skull clears customs without unnecessary problems. The carvers do the carving. I take care of everything that happens after that.

Living where they’re made

I’d been traveling to Brazil for years, and every trip pulled me in further. The country, the people, and something I can only describe as the energy of all that crystal sitting in the ground. Then I met a Brazilian woman, we married, and the decision more or less made itself. In 2019 I moved to Minas Gerais, where most of the world’s best quartz comes out of the ground and a lot of the best skulls are carved.

It changed how I work completely. I now work with the carvers directly, and it goes past just buying. I visit the workshops. I’ll suggest a change to a design, point out where a finish is rushed, introduce a style I think will work. The pressure on a carver is usually to make more, not better, so I push the other way and help them improve the quality of their work further.

Being here is also why I can promise what I promise. Natural stone, never glass or resin. Really hand-carved. Really from this region, from people I know personally and pay fairly.

How I choose a skull

I see far more skulls than make it to the website. Most of what I do is say no. I reject more than I keep.

Two things decide if a skull makes it to the shop.

The first you can learn to see. The stone: clear or dull, alive with rainbows and veils or flat. The carving: the proportions, the detail, whether the face has an expression or is just a skull shape with sockets. The finish, which many people underrate. I check the polish around the teeth and eye sockets, where rushed work shows. Plenty of skulls look great in a photo and disappoint in person, so I’m always checking what a photo hides.

The second is harder to say out loud. Some skulls have a presence and some don’t. I can pick up two that match on paper, same stone, same size, similar carving, and one has something the other doesn’t. After this many years, I’ve learned to trust that feeling. I usually know it as soon as I pick up a skull. Those are the pieces I most want to pass on, because they have something that goes beyond the stone and the carving.

There’s one more thing, and it isn’t about the skull alone. The piece someone connects with often isn’t the one they came looking for, and it isn’t always the most perfect stone or carving. So I don’t only keep the “best” pieces. I choose a range of skulls with different stones, faces, moods, and characters, because different people connect with different things. My job isn’t to push you toward the most expensive one. It’s to help the right one find you so that later, when you’re ready for another, you know where to come back.

Why buy from me, not straight from a carver

You can try to buy straight from the workshop, of course, and sometimes it works out fine. But a carver’s job is carving. That’s what they’re brilliant at, and usually where it ends: little English for clear communication, no real setup for international packing, no customs paperwork, no proper photos, and nothing after the sale. Crystal travels badly when it’s packed for across town instead of across the world, and a parcel with the wrong paperwork sits in customs or comes back.

Then there’s the part you can’t do from a distance: the inspection. I hold each piece in daylight and check it up close, the polish around the teeth and sockets, the clarity, any fracture or repair, the things a photo can flatter or hide. Buying direct, you’re trusting a photo. Buying through me, you’re getting a skull I’ve already vetted in person, the check you’d want to make yourself but can’t from the other side of the world.

And there’s the price. Because I buy regularly, in numbers, and through relationships I’ve built here over years, I get far better prices than a foreigner turning up for one or two pieces. So the gap between buying from me and going direct is much smaller than you’d expect, and you get all the rest for it: the choosing, the packing, the paperwork, the aftercare.

That whole middle part is what I do. I’ve held the piece, I’ve checked it properly, I pack it to survive the journey, I get the paperwork right, and if something goes wrong there’s a real person to deal with. The carvers are brilliant at carving. The rest is on me.

How I work and what I won’t do

Here are some things I stand for.

I pay the carvers fairly. They’re skilled people and I’d rather the skull reach you through fair hands.

I’m honest about each piece. If a skull has a fracture, a cloudy patch, a repair, or anything that looks different in person than on screen, I tell you before you buy. I’d sooner lose the sale than have it turn up wrong.

I photograph in daylight, and every skull comes with a short video of me holding it and turning it through all the angles, so what you see is what arrives. No tricks, no enhanced photos.

And I don’t call anything what it isn’t. Natural stone is natural stone. Hand-carved is hand-carved. If I’m not sure of something, I say so.

In short

• 25+ years working with crystal skulls
• Selling worldwide since 2008
• Living in Minas Gerais, Brazil, since 2019, at the source
• 1,000+ skulls placed with collectors in 15+ countries
• Every skull natural stone, hand-carved, personally chosen, and shown in a natural-light video before you buy

That’s me, and that’s how I work. I’m in a fairly rare spot: I know the skulls, I know the trade, and I live close enough to the source to hand-pick them myself.

If any of this resonates with you, the best thing is just to look and feel. Browse the skulls, watch the videos, and see if one catches you. You’ll usually know.

Not sure where to begin? Read how to choose your first crystal skull », or just send me a message. I personally answer all messages.

You can also find me on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or read buyer reviews on Trustpilot.