Jewelry Journey Podcast

What you'll learn in this episode: How Sharon's own jewelry journey began and how her family is preserving her exceptional collection. Who Sharon considers her most memorable guests and which insights stuck with her over the years. What prompted Sharon to travel the world to study jewelry, and what she learned during her decades of studying the art form. Sharon's tips for new podcasters on how to create a show with longevity. How you can share your memories of Sharon and continue to connect with the Jewelry Journey community. About Sharon Berman Sharon Berman is managing principal of Berbay Marketing & Public Relations, specializing in working with professionals to create the visibility and credibility that fuel revenue growth. After 20 years of positioning lawyers and other trusted advisors as experts, Sharon launched Arts and Jewelry and expanded her scope to include professionals in the decorative arts and jewelry fields. A passionate jewelry collector, Sharon is studying for her GIA Graduate Gemology diploma. She is on the Board of Art Jewelry Forum, and is a member of the Association for the Study of Jewelry & Related Arts, American Society of Jewelry Historians, Society of Jewellery Historians and Society of North American Goldsmiths. Sharon writes and speaks frequently about business development and marketing for professionals. She has been a speaker at the Antique & Estate Jewelry Conference ("Jewelry Camp"). Sharon earned her undergraduate degree at UCLA and her MBA at USC. Additional Links to Articles About Sharon and Her Life: Berbay Art Jewelry Forum For donations in lieu of flowers, please follow the next link to Simms Mann program at UCLA, which was important to Sharon and Jonathan: Donations Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Welcome to the Jewelry Journey, exploring the hidden world of art around you. Because every piece of art has a story, and jewelry is no exception. Sharon: Hello, everyone! Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. Jonathan: In fact, it's not going to be Sharon today. I'm Jonathan Kramer, known to some as Mr. Sharon Berman, and I'll open this podcast with some news, not unexpected in some quarters. Sharon passed away in August 2024 from the long-term effects of cancer. Sharon lived a long and productive life. Even after her cancer diagnosis some nine years ago and her prognosis that she would only live for five years, she soldiered through, did an amazing job of prolonging her life, and in some important ways, did that through this Jewelry Journey Podcast. In the podcast you're about to hear, Sharon's jewelry journey is going to be the subject. My youngest daughter, Aleah Kramer, is interviewing Sharon. This interview took place a couple of months before Sharon's passing. It's going to be the same thing you've heard before about a person's jewelry journey, but it's going to be very personal to Sharon. Sharon's jewelry journey with me began 32 plus years ago when we were dating each other, and it was very clear that we were going to get married. Sharon made it very clear that I should not bother to buy her an engagement ring and that she would take care of that herself. That was very typical of the Sharon I would come to know and love and typical of her approach to jewelry. She didn't want to leave it to me to pick out her engagement ring and just said to me, "Don't worry about that." She ended up ordering some diamonds to evaluate from Empire State Jewelers in the Empire State Building. I remember that. She picked out the stone she liked, and she picked out the setting that she wanted it to be and had it constructed. That should have told me three decades ago that I was with a very special woman who knew her taste in jewelry and wasn't going to be sidetracked in that. That was actually the beginning of my jewelry journey with Sharon. Her jewelry journey has been one of passion and pleasure, and she's become quite the well-known person, even before she began this series of podcasts. I'm amazingly proud of what she's accomplished in terms of her own jewelry journey, and I have to say she's had an exquisite palate in the selecting and enjoyment of jewelry. She didn't just buy jewelry to collect it. She wore her jewelry all the time. It was a source of pleasure, and it made her feel comfortable. Her jewelry was a source of comfort for her. She would find these incredible makers and go out and interview them and purchase their goods. She really supported emerging artists. That was one of the gateways to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. She wanted to share that enthusiasm for the up-and-coming makers with people that she talked with all the time. The more she talked to people, the more people said, "You know what? You should do a podcast and share this." That's how the Jewelry Journey Podcast really started, some 225-ish episodes ago. We're going to leave the podcast up for people to listen to and hopefully enjoy and learn from. It will be a good and honorable tribute to Sharon's jewelry journey to do that. With that, I'm going to let Aleah do the magic of editing here. She's been the editor of these podcasts and has done an amazing job pulling all of this together. I am deeply grateful for her participation in the podcast and, more importantly, the fact that she and Sharon were really partners in this jewelry journey. I am indebted to Sharon for really opening Aleah's eyes to the jewelry journey. Aleah has become an exquisite collector and has gotten as much joy out of collecting as Sharon. With that, we'll go to the podcast that Sharon talks about her jewelry journey, and then I'll come back at the end to close this out. Sharon: Welcome to the Jewelry Journey. I'm your host, Sharon Berman, and today we have a bit of a different episode. I have a few announcements to make, and then I'm going to share some of my jewelry journey. To help me with that, I'm going to introduce Aleah Kramer. First, thank you all for listening. If this is your first time, a big welcome. If you are familiar with this podcast, welcome back. I'm sorry to report that we suddenly lost several gems in the jewelry world. One of them is Cookie Lewis, who I can't say had a defined role, but she was my best friend. I've known her for 30 years and have been very friendly for the past 20 years, and she really got me into jewelry. Cookie was a very nice person, but I think anybody who knew her for any length of time would say she's a tough cookie. She had definite opinions that were difficult to change. I wouldn't always listen, but I knew she knew her stuff. I saw salespeople who would look at her when she contradicted them. They would look at her like, "Lady, you don't know what you're talking about," but they'd go back and ask, and sure enough, she was right. Then they would take something out of one case and put it in another. She knew her stones and could always identify the flaws in stones much better than I could, despite all the study I've done. Cookie Lewis will be missed. The next gem that we lost is Robert Allen. Robert did our transcriptions. Robert did transcriptions for me for eight to 10 years, but for the Jewelry Journey since its inception. He had great analytical skills, as did Cookie, but they were both creative in their different ways. In my experience, I've found that people who are good at analysis aren't really the best people for creative endeavors. I thought they both could look outside of their analytical areas and look at the creative aspects of their profession. For instance, every year about Christmas time, Robert Allen would call me with a different idea. "Hey Sharon, I was thinking, what do you think of this?" Then he'd go into it. I can't tell you that I always accepted them or implemented them, but I thought it was really nice that he thought about it. I'll miss that. Our new co-host has been involved in the podcast for a long time but behind the scenes. Now she's coming out of the shadows. Her name is Aleah Kramer, and she's been a producer, an editor, a transcriber, and a pinch hitter. She's also my stepdaughter. She's also joined me on several voyages that I've gone on for the Jewelry Journey, and I would say that is really her métier. She knows it very well, art jewelry. Aleah: Thank you so much, Sharon. That was such a lovely introduction. Hi, everybody. My name is Aleah Kramer, and I am so excited that we're going to share some of your jewelry journey today. Sharon, you always ask your guests a few important questions, and I've always wondered what your answers to these questions are. I wanted to ask you, how did you first become interested in jewelry? Sharon: I think I first became interested in jewelry because I liked jewelry, but really it was Cookie Lewis who drew me into jewelry. She introduced me to estate jewelry, and from there I was off and running. Aleah: What are some of your favorite types of jewelry? Sharon: I like contemporary jewelry, some art jewelry. I used to like it a lot more. And estate jewelry of any kind. By estate jewelry, I mean used jewelry. That's how most people would define it. Aleah: I often hear you ask your guests about collecting and what defines a collector. What do you define as a collector? Sharon: That's a hard-to-answer question. I've been asked that before. I still don't have a good answer. What is a collector? A collector can be somebody who has three or more of the same kind of piece, three or more pieces by the same named jeweler or the same named maker. I really don't have a definition, and here I'm asking everybody who comes on what they define as a collector. Somebody told me they thought they were a really good shepherd of jewelry, and I thought that was interesting. I'm not sure that really fits the bill, but it was interesting to hear. What do you define as a collector, Aleah? Aleah: Oh, I'm too early in the biz to have any definitions. I'm interested in exploring all of the avenues and creating some definit

What you'll learn in this episode: Jennifer's unique process of layering acrylic and art images, and how she discovered her signature technique. Why the most important thing a young artist can do is find their voice. Why Jennifer rarely uses images her customers request in her jewelry. How Jennifer's work ties into the history of pop and op art. Why Jennifer sees other art jewelers as inspiration, not competition. About Jennifer Merchant: Jennifer Merchant is a studio t based in Minneapolis, MN. She graduated with a BFA in Metals and Jewelry from the Savannah College of Art and Design. She is a full-time artist showcasing her work in galleries, museums and exhibitions. Her work has been published in several national magazines such as American Craft, Ornament and Delta Sky Magazine. Merchant is best known for her innovative layered acrylic process in which images and prints are layered between solid acrylic. Her work is graphic with clean lines and modern aesthetic. Pieces confound viewers, appearing transparent from one angle of view while showcasing bold patterns and colors from another. Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Additional resources: Website Facebook Instagram Twitter Transcript: Like the op and pop art that inspires it, Jennifer Merchant's jewelry challenges your eye. Clear from some angles and bold and colorful from others, the jewelry is created by layering acrylic with images from art books. Jennifer joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how she developed her technique; how she chooses the images in her jewelry; and why art jewelers need to work together to push the discipline forward. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven't heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com. Today, my guest is Jennifer Merchant. Jennifer was also a guest several years ago. She thought she would be a metalsmith but segued to acrylic jewelry, which is what she has become known for: creative and innovative acrylic jewelry such as necklaces, bracelets, earrings and brooches. They have eye-catching graphics embedded in them. I was also surprised to learn that hand carving is sometimes involved. Welcome back. When you left college, did you know you were going to have your own business? Jennifer: Not right away. I think it took me about five years to really get the confidence together to start my own business. I definitely spent that first five years after graduation very lost and not really sure what in the heck I was going to do with my jewelry degree, especially because I went to school in Savannah, Georgia. That's where I made all my art connections and jewelry connections. Moving back to Minneapolis, I was off on my own. I didn't have a community at that point. It definitely was a number of years of wondering, "How am I going to end up using this degree that cost me so much money?" I had been waiting tables and was increasingly unhappy because I knew I had something different to offer the world. I ended up getting fired from a job. I had been speaking with a friend at work who had another friend that was putting on an art show. She had told me about it because she knew I was an artist. I remember getting fired from the job and calling her up right away, like, "I think I want to do that art show because I need to try to make some money." It went okay, and it inspired me to say, "Jewelry is something you can do and make a living with. Let's give this a shot." I had to move back home with my mom for a couple of years and cut my expenses way down, because I wasn't going to take out another loan to start a business. I built it very small, very scrappy. I had a second bedroom in my mom's house where I had my workshop, and I started from there doing little local events. That's where it all started. Sharon: Wow. What's the biggest piece of advice you can give to somebody who's just starting out? Jennifer: I would say when you're just starting out, really try to find your voice. Sharon: What do you do? What does one do when they find their voice? For instance, some people have found the voice, but they're homemakers or they work in an office. What do you do when you find your voice? Jennifer: I think once you know what you want to say, the next step is finding out who wants to hear it. And that is a very hard step, finding your niche and finding your people that resonate with your voice. I think the only way to really do that is to get yourself out there, get your work out there. I think with the Internet now and how accessible online stuff is, it might be a little easier to get yourself out there through social media, through the Internet, than maybe it was years ago when you had to have a physical presence out in the world. People can start by getting their work out there online and hopefully seeing who is interested, who connects with it, and then finding places in the real, outside world to continue that process and eventually find your market. Sharon: Do you have people who come to you with the image they want to include already? Jennifer: Not very often. I've had people ask me about that, but I think ultimately, I have to be drawn to the image specifically in order to be able to incorporate it in a piece. I did have a client that had a specific art piece she wanted in a bracelet for her daughter. That I was able to do because I resonated with the work and it was something that worked well within the form of jewelry. I've also had requests where someone wants family mementos or something encased in the acrylic. That's a very cool, sentimental thing, but visually, it doesn't really work with my aesthetic as well. I'm not going to do something just because I get asked for it. I also have to be drawn to it enough in order to go through with it, because it is a labor-intensive process and it is an art of passion. If I'm not super excited about the thing I'm making, it's probably not going to turn out that great either. I have tried to do things early on in my career specifically for a client that just didn't quite work out. We weren't on the same page. I think as you get more into it, you figure out the types of things you can push the boundaries on and the types of things that you can't. When someone's request is something that you can do and make them happy with, and when it's just not something that'll work out, you know. Sharon: That's interesting. So if somebody brought you their wedding photo, it depends on whether you like the wedding dress or something like that. Jennifer: Or if it has enough visual interest. I think the thing that makes my work successful is the images that I do use are interesting within a small scale of jewelry, and not all images can do that. I work with a lot of op art and pop art, and there's a lot of visual interest going on in a small space. With a photograph or something more sentimental, that's not always the case. It just wouldn't look as cool as they think it's going to. Sharon: I've seen comic books used in your work. How did you come to that? Jennifer: All of the things in my work that look like comic books are actually Roy Lichtenstein pieces. His pop art was inspired by comics, and he reimagined them into huge canvases and paintings. My jewelry does something similar, where I take Roy Lichtenstein's work and images and collect tons of books and rip out those pages and put that in my jewelry. It feels kind of meta. I've actually met some of his descendants and collectors and friends over the years, and a lot of them assure me that he would really appreciate what I'm doing with his work. It's a very similar idea as to how he repurposed art and things that he saw into something new and different. Sharon: That's interesting. I didn't know that. Did you study art history in college as you were studying jewelry and metal and all that? Jennifer: Yeah, art history is definitely part of your Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. It wasn't always my favorite class because the art history classes were about art that was ancient and a lot of religious art and that sort of thing. I think I had one class where it was modern art in the 20th century, which, of course, is the most interesting to me. But that art history background definitely sparked some interest in different art movements and art periods. Art Deco is a very favorite design motif of mine. As I was talking about earlier, I'm very inspired by pop art and op art. I think art history plays a huge role. I never thought at the time when I was in school that I would end up studying more about art history and specific artists and doing that kind of research, but it is really important to my work now. Sharon: Can you explain what the difference between pop art and op art is? Jennifer: Sure. With pop art, everyone knows Roy Lichtenstein and Warhol. They took popular things or everyday objects like a soup can and made them stylized and put them in the context of fine art as this kind of ridiculous thing. Op art deals with optical properties. A lot of op art is very linear. It kind of tricks your eye. It looks like it's moving, but it's a static image. Funny enough, when I started working with op art, I was actually collecting those optical illusions books for kids. There'd be very few usable images in there, but there'd be a few black and white, scintillating-looking, squiggly-lined spirals or something like that. That sparked my interest in optical art and looking it up outside of the context of those silly books for kids. I found out this is a whole art movement, and there are artists like Richard Anuszkiewicz and Victor Vasarely and Bridget Riley that pioneered this in the 60s, when it really became a thing. I just find it so fascinating. But it's kind of funny that my two art movements that I use a lot in my work are pop and op. Like, who knew? Sharon: Do you ever use any other kind besides those? You

What you'll learn in this episode: Jennifer's unique process of layering acrylic and art images, and how she discovered her signature technique. Why the most important thing a young artist can do is find their voice. Why Jennifer rarely uses images her customers request in her jewelry. How Jennifer's work ties into the history of pop and op art. Why Jennifer sees other art jewelers as inspiration, not competition. About Jennifer Merchant: Jennifer Merchant is a studio t based in Minneapolis, MN. She graduated with a BFA in Metals and Jewelry from the Savannah College of Art and Design. She is a full-time artist showcasing her work in galleries, museums and exhibitions. Her work has been published in several national magazines such as American Craft, Ornament and Delta Sky Magazine. Merchant is best known for her innovative layered acrylic process in which images and prints are layered between solid acrylic. Her work is graphic with clean lines and modern aesthetic. Pieces confound viewers, appearing transparent from one angle of view while showcasing bold patterns and colors from another. Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Additional resources: Website Facebook Instagram Twitter Transcript: Like the op and pop art that inspires it, Jennifer Merchant's jewelry challenges your eye. Clear from some angles and bold and colorful from others, the jewelry is created by layering acrylic with images from art books. Jennifer joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how she developed her technique; how she chooses the images in her jewelry; and why art jewelers need to work together to push the discipline forward. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it's released later this week. Today, my guest is Jennifer Merchant. Jennifer was also a guest several years ago. She thought she would be a metalsmith but segued to acrylic jewelry, which is what she has become known for: creative and innovative acrylic jewelry such as necklaces, bracelets, earrings and brooches. They have eye-catching graphics embedded in them. I was also surprised to learn that hand carving is sometimes involved. Jennifer exhibits all over the country. She's been an active member of SNAG, the Society of North American Goldsmiths. She is also a member of other major jewelry organizations. Jennifer is going to tell us all about why she has chosen this route and her process in general. Jennifer, welcome to the program. Jennifer: Thank you so much for having me, Sharon. Sharon: I'm glad to have you. Why did you start working with acrylics? Jennifer: I actually started working with acrylic while I was still in college at the Savannah College of Art and Design studying metalsmithing and jewelry. Our professor gave us little chunks of acrylic one day, probably with the thought of using it for die forms. But I decided, "Hey, you can cut and sculpt this very similarly to working with waxes for lost wax casting." I liked the immediacy of the acrylic, that once you carved it and sculpted it and polished it, it was a finished piece. It had a lot of really cool optical properties. So, I always kept it on the back burner as an interesting material. Then when I graduated from college and I moved back to my hometown of Minneapolis, I didn't have the tools and equipment to keep working with metal. So, I kind of fell into, "Hey, there was that acrylic I worked with a couple of times in school. It was very interesting. Let's see what we can do with that," because it was cheap, and I could cut it with simple tools. I started experimenting with it from there. Sharon: And you make all sorts of jewelry with it. Do you know when you start out that you'll be making a necklace or a bracelet with the pieces you have, or do they talk to you as you put them together? Jennifer: I make pieces both ways. Sometimes I'll design a piece very specifically and have an idea and a picture in my mind of what I'm making. But then there's other times, especially when I'm working with the scraps that are left over from pieces that I've made in the past. A lot of those scraps are still very interesting, and they'll be in weird shapes. Those will speak to me, and I'll create something new and different with some of those. I kind of work both ways. Sharon: I know you're in a lot of stores and galleries. Do stores tell you what to do, or do you just say, "Here it is, do you like it"? Jennifer: I'm more of a, "Here's what I've been making. Let me know which ones you like." I think sometimes it's important to follow your own inspirations. People tend to be drawn to the things that I'm most excited to make. That being said, some galleries have different clientele bases with different price points, so they'll tell me, "Hey, these pieces were working really well." I'll take some feedback. But ultimately, I focus on making the things that I'm drawn to. Sharon: Do you have a studio inside your home or do you have a place that you go? Jennifer: For years I did have a studio outside of my home that I really loved, but a few years ago my husband and I bought a home, and I decided to move my jewelry practice into my home. So, now I work from home. But who knows, maybe in the future I'll expand a little bit and have another space in addition outside the home. It can be kind of a challenge working at home sometimes, but I've done both. I like working both ways, so we'll see what the future has for me. Sharon: Do you have assistants who work with you? Jennifer: I've had assistants in the past. I don't anymore. I scaled my business way back during COVID and took a breather to reevaluate what I'm doing and where my motivations are. I'm only just beginning to build it back. At this point, I don't work with anyone, but hopefully in the future I can find someone to help out with some of the production. It's a little challenging to find an assistant because my process is very unique. It's not something that people know how to do, so there's a lot of training involved. When I do work with people, it takes quite a while to get somebody that can help finish pieces to the quality standards that my galleries and clients expect. Sharon: When you were reevaluating things, what did you decide? Did your method change during COVID? Jennifer: I think things just slowed way down during COVID. 2020, honestly, it was going to be my year. I had a couple of really big events planned, one of which I got to do because it was in February, but the rest all moved online. There was such a lull in events and things to participate in. I had started questioning what my motivations are, because you really have to love what you're doing in order to be an artist as a profession. We had bought a house and were settling in. I've just been taking the last few years to figure out life so I can bring my A-game to my business again. Sharon: Did you stop production because you were doing it yourself during COVID? Jennifer: I did slow way down on production. If I had a client that was interested in something, or if I had an online event or that kind of thing, that would motivate me to produce some new pieces. But there were just fewer things going on to spark that creation. I have a harder time making things just because. I like to have an outside influence, like a show that's coming up or events that are going to happen and people are going to see my pieces. When I don't know when those things are going on, I have a little bit of a harder time. I think that is why during COVID, everything slowed down for me especially. But it also gave me a lot of time to think about what I want out of my business and where I want to go. And in May, I'll be launching my first web shop where you can actually buy my pieces directly from me. Sharon: Wow. I know that's a Herculean task. Jennifer: For me personally, the web shop is an extra big step because all of my pieces, even my production work, is one of a kind because of the images I'm using within my jewelry. They're all found images from art books and other sources. So, even if it's the same shape, like the marquee hoop earring, no two are going to be the exact same. So, every time I list a piece online for sale, I have to photograph each and every single one of them. It's taken a long time to get some of those things down where I could do it quickly enough and efficiently enough to be able to post all of these pieces with the right listings. It's a lot more work than having a design where you can put a picture of it and sell 25 of them. It's been a daunting thing to tackle. Sharon: Did you have to wait until you were efficient at photographing and making them so you could just churn them out? Jennifer: My work is very difficult to photograph because it is clear and transparent from some angles, and then it's bright and colorful from others. It's also very reflective. So, trying to photograph it cleanly and communicate the piece in a single image is very difficult. My work tends to resonate more from multiple angles. It has taken years to figure out the best way to represent these pieces in an image or two. Sharon: The online shop, do you think it's your most valuable social media outlet? Is there one? What do you think that is? Jennifer: For me, I'm not huge on social media. Instagram, I think, is the most fun. It's very image forward, which is something I really enjoy. Definitely, as I launch my website, I will be on social media a lot more to market. I think up until now I've mostly worked with galleries and shops or done specific events, so I haven't cultivated my online audience as much. I'm excited to explore that new chapter and get more into it and see what I can do from my home. That way in the future, when something happens where in-person events may not be happening as much, I can still have a connection to my audien

What you'll learn in this episode: How Gabriela produces jewelry in Mexico, manages her business from Montreal, and sells her jewelry worldwide. Gabriela's favorite stone to work with, and how she chooses and sources gems for her colorful jewelry. How moving from Mexico to Canada (and experiencing seasons for the first time) influenced Gabriela's work. What it means for jewelry to be slow made. Why COVID prompted Gabriela to transition from packaging design to jewelry design, and how she overcame her hesitation to call herself a jewelry maker. About Gabriela Sierra Gaby, designer and creator of Gabriela Sierra jewelry, is anything but a minimalist. Unafraid of color, she plays with bold shapes, textures and asymmetry. Her meticulously crafted pieces are meant to be conversation starters. With a background in Industrial Design followed by a variety of courses at Alchimia Contemporary Jewellery School, Gabriela Sierra merges design and fashion to create unique sculptural jewelry. The brand seeks to reflect the spirit of the slowmade process (quality over quantity). Founded in 2021, Gabriela Sierra is committed to good design by focusing on quality materials and the revaluation of craftsmanship. Her work has been shown at different worldwide exhibitions: "Todo es Diseño" Queretaro, Mexico 2021 "The Fab" Milano Jewelry Week 2022 "Cluster Contemporary Jewelry", London 2022 "The Earring Show", Vancouver, Canada 2023 "Earrings Galore 2023 - 2024", United States   Additional Resources: Website Instagram Facebook Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Expertly combining bold colors and shapes in her jewelry, it's clear that Gabriela Sierra has an eye for design. Beginning her career in furniture and packaging design, Gabriela made her lifelong dream of becoming a jewelry maker come true in 2021, when she opened Gabriela Sierra Jewelry. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how her upbringing in Mexico and her current home in Montreal influence her work; why her business follows "slow made" principles; and how she became more confident about calling herself a jewelry designer. Read the episode transcript here.   Welcome to the Jewelry Journey, exploring the hidden world of art around you. Because every piece of art has a story, and jewelry is no exception. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven't heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com. Today, I'm talking with Gabriela Sierra of Gabriela Sierra Jewelry. Welcome back. So, everything might not be handcrafted, but you have chosen those individual stones to go together or the kind of stone to work with. For instance, will you choose a faceted stone to work with? Could you have a combination of a faceted stone with a cabochon with a smooth curve? Gabriela: Yes. I already have some designs before combining these different types of cuts. Yes, for sure. I'm not like, "I'm just going to work with cabochon and that's it." No. I think t I'm open to work with different kinds of cuts. I like to work with cuts that are not the traditional ones. I just create new cuts and new cuts, and then as I mentioned, I make an order with my suppliers to have a sample to see if it really works, because in my mind everything works perfectly. I need to see the real thing physically, here with me in my hands, to see if everything is okay. Sharon: Do you go to the Tucson Show in Arizona to choose stones? Gabriela: No, I haven't had a chance to go. I see the videos and I see that all the jewelers I follow go there. I do wish to go there, but I just recently received my American visa. That was one of the reasons why I didn't go to the Tucson Show. But I would love to have the opportunity to go. Maybe next year. For sure, I want to go. Next year it's easier. Here in Montreal there's also a gem show, a smaller version. It was last year. I think it's here every year. I went there last year, and it was very good. Of course, to a new person it's just huge. There are a lot of suppliers from everywhere, from every part of the world, so I really wanted to go. Sharon: How do you decide if it's a good quality stone versus one that's not as good? Is it just by eye, or do you look through a loupe? Gabriela: I don't have a lot of knowledge. I'm not trained to really recognize if a stone is a very good quality stone. I think I just need to love the stone and see that it's without any breakage, it's not with a hole or some kind of damage. I need to love the stone, and it needs to be a good cut in my opinion. I'm not an expert gemologist, so I cannot tell if it's perfectly cut. I just need to see the stone and if it's love at first sight. If I love the stone, it's perfect. Sharon: Does it have to fit a certain bezel or do you make the bezel to fit the stone? Most of your gems seem to be bezel set. Gabriela: At the beginning, when I first chose the stones and then designed, yes, I based my design on the gemstone. I created the bezel around it. But after that, when I had a clear concept, I designed first and then chose the stone. When I order the stones, they need to be the size that I need because I cannot change the design. But yes, basically all my gemstones are with a bezel. Sharon: Do you have a studio outside your home, or a place inside your apartment or home where you design your jewelry? Gabriela: In Mexico, my studio is in my house in Querétaro. Querétaro is the city where I live. It's in my house. The first floor is all my studio. Now Samantha is working there. But now here in Montréal, last year, last October, I found a place that rents a space for jewelers. I'm a resident there and I work from there. I have all the necessary things because it's an atelier. The atelier is called Artéfact. A lot of jewelers from Montreal rent their space and work there to create their pieces. Sharon: Can you go any time, or do you have to sign up for certain times? Gabriela: No, because I'm a resident, I can go if I want to go. During the night I can go. Any time I want. They give classes there also, but it doesn't matter if they are giving classes. I can go whenever I want. In Montreal it's a little bit different. It's difficult to have a studio in your house or apartment. You need a permit because you're working with gas, with fire, with chemicals. It's different. In Mexico we don't need permits to have a gas tank in our house. Here it's a little bit different. Sharon: Do you ever get nervous working with fire and chemicals? Does that make you nervous? Gabriela: At the beginning, yes. Yes, of course. Because you're working with gas, if you're not careful enough, there could be an accident. Also, because my studio is in my house, I was worried at the beginning that I needed to be very careful because this is my house. My husband lives here. My stuff is here. So, yeah, I need to be careful. I was nervous at the beginning because I was working with fire. But you just need to follow the steps. That's it. If you work carefully and follow the precautions, you are good. Sharon: And you have a pet. Do they keep you company in the studio? Where do they keep you company? Gabriela: Yes, I have a dog. Her name is Jude Right now, she is in Mexico, but I will bring her here very soon because I miss her so much. She was the one reminding me every day, "Hey, Gabi, it's time to go home. I'm hungry. Let's go home." Home for her was the second floor of our house. I miss her so much. It's more than love for me and for my husband. Sharon: Does she comfort you? If you're having a bad day with the stones, do you get comfort from her? Gabriela: Yes. I don't know what dogs have, but they know if you are feeling bad or you are sad or you are happy. They just know. She approaches every time I feel bad or sad, or I break a bezel or I break a gemstone. She knows. Also because I scream a lot and I'm saying bad words. Sharon: I want to talk to you a little bit about starting the business, deciding to start the business and keeping it going. You're newer in your making journey than some of the people I've talked to on the podcast. What made you decide that it was time to leave? Gabriela: Well, COVID hit, and I think for many people, it was a time to reflect, and I reflected and reevaluated my path. That was the moment that I decided to quit my job as a packaging specialist. It was hard. A lot of people called me crazy because it was a very difficult time, but I was so sure. I don't know what COVID had at that particular time but it gave me a signal or something that I wasn't in the right place. That particular time was hard, but it gave me the strength to start my jewelry business and start to set up my studio. During COVID, I took some classes to refresh the techniques that I had learned years before at Alchimia to start making jewelry. I learned a lot of techniques, but the years passed, and I needed a refresh. But it was hard. I'm not going to lie; it was really hard. Because I was new, I was scared. I was afraid of failure. In my mind, I was thinking, "Who is going to buy my jewelry? Who is going to like my jewelry? How will I pay all my bills.?" All those questions started to appear in my mind. You asked me a question about how I introduce myself, and I told you that I felt comfortable to say I was a jewelry maker a year ago. I had a lot of insecurity. I wasn't sure that I was a jewelry maker because I wasn't prepared in a jewelry school. I didn't have the proper school, I didn't have a proper education for being a jeweler. It was tough at the beginning, but then my work started to get noticed, to get exposed, and I had the opportunity to be in different exhibitions. I think the trust grew from there, and I feel more and more comfortable calling myself a jewelry maker now. Sharon: What is your distribution? How do people hear about you? Do people place orders at shows, or do you exhibit all over the world? Gabriela:

What you'll learn in this episode: How Gabriela produces jewelry in Mexico, manages her business from Montreal, and sells her jewelry worldwide. Gabriela's favorite stone to work with, and how she chooses and sources gems for her colorful jewelry. How moving from Mexico to Canada (and experiencing seasons for the first time) influenced Gabriela's work. What it means for jewelry to be slow made. Why COVID prompted Gabriela to transition from packaging design to jewelry design, and how she overcame her hesitation to call herself a jewelry maker. About Gabriela Sierra Gaby, designer and creator of Gabriela Sierra jewelry, is anything but a minimalist. Unafraid of color, she plays with bold shapes, textures and asymmetry. Her meticulously crafted pieces are meant to be conversation starters. With a background in Industrial Design followed by a variety of courses at Alchimia Contemporary Jewellery School, Gabriela Sierra merges design and fashion to create unique sculptural jewelry. The brand seeks to reflect the spirit of the slowmade process (quality over quantity). Founded in 2021, Gabriela Sierra is committed to good design by focusing on quality materials and the revaluation of craftsmanship. Her work has been shown at different worldwide exhibitions: "Todo es Diseño" Queretaro, Mexico 2021 "The Fab" Milano Jewelry Week 2022 "Cluster Contemporary Jewelry", London 2022 "The Earring Show", Vancouver, Canada 2023 "Earrings Galore 2023 - 2024", United States   Additional Resources: Website Instagram Facebook Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Expertly combining bold colors and shapes in her jewelry, it's clear that Gabriela Sierra has an eye for design. Beginning her career in furniture and packaging design, Gabriela made her lifelong dream of becoming a jewelry maker come true in 2021, when she opened Gabriela Sierra Jewelry. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how her upbringing in Mexico and her current home in Montreal influence her work; why her business follows "slow made" principles; and how she became more confident about calling herself a jewelry designer. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it's released later this week. Today, I'm talking with Gabriela Sierra of Gabriela Sierra Jewelry. Her Mexican heritage shines through because of the bold colors in her jewelry. You will immediately see that when you look at her jewelry. I'm talking to her today, and she's in Canada, where she travels. She specializes in earrings. She uses recycled silver, and the stones she uses come from small, independent mines or mines that are located in Mexico. She believes in slow made. Her jewelry is meticulously crafted, and she does not have any inventory on hand. Almost everything is made to order at somebody's request. Today, Gabriela will tell us about her business and how it works. Gabriela, welcome to the program. Gabriela: I'm so excited to be here, Sharon. Thank you so much for inviting me. Sharon: Can you tell us how you decided on jewelry as a profession? Gabriela: Yes, sure. Well, I have always been drawn to jewelry since I was a kid. I was influenced by my mom and my grandmother. I remember her presence was always announced by the clicking of her bangles and her bold earrings. I studied industrial design, and during university I took a jewelry class. That experience started everything, just initiated my passion. Basically, it started from that. I knew at that particular moment that I needed to find further training, so after I finished university, I took a four-month course at Alchimia Contemporary Jewelry School. I had an amazing time there, and also the teachers were absolutely wonderful. However, it took me some time to find the courage to start my own brand, which I did eventually, after eight years. Now I'm here. Sharon: So, you studied industrial design before? Gabriela: Yeah. Sharon: Your passion for jewelry must have been underlying, and the industrial design really brought it out. So, after eight years, you decided to start your own brand. During most of that time, were you making different kinds of jewelry? Gabriela: No, actually, when I came back to Mexico after taking the course at Alchimia, I was so afraid of failure. That's why I didn't start my own brand at that particular time. In my mind, it was better to find a normal job. So, during those eight years, I worked as a designer for furniture. I also specialized as a packaging engineer or packaging specialist. Basically, I wasn't working in jewelry those eight years. Sharon: But you were working in design, right? Gabriela: Yeah. Sharon: Did your background help you in all of this? Does industrial design help? Gabriela: Yes, of course. I think yeah, absolutely. Since the first job that I had, designing furniture, I actually like all the stripped elements. I take a lot of influence and ideas from what I see outside. You can actually see a few of my designs being an idea of a light bulb, for example. I think it helped a lot. Also talking about packaging, especially the job that I had, it helped me a lot to understand a little bit of marketing and, of course, packaging. It gave me a big picture to understand a little bit more, not just the design part, but everything else, all the different areas involving the launch of a product. Sharon: I'm sure you do a whole range of jewelry, but right now you seem to focus more on earrings. Is that true? And, if so, why? Gabriela: Right now, yes, my main focus is on earrings. A month ago I started creating rings, a series of rings. But yes, I love earrings and my main focus is earrings. Why? The earrings are easier—not to create, but rings need to be sized. For me and in my experience, it's easier to make earrings for everyone. Rings need to be sized, so it's not for everyone. Sharon: Do you think you'll stick with earrings? Do you think you'll branch out from earrings to other things or stick with earrings? Gabriela: No, I think I will start creating other things later on. Right now, I will create the series of rings. After that, I will probably start with some necklaces. But for sure, I will start doing things differently. I'm from Mexico, but right now, I've been living in Montreal since last August. I came from another country and I'm learning about the culture here. Also, because I'm an atelier, I'm opening a new studio here in Montreal. I'm getting to know new artists and learning about them and their techniques. I think that travel helps a lot to create new things, just absorbing everything. So, I'm sure I'm going to create different things in the future, not just the earrings. Sharon: Do you have ideas that you think about when you travel or see when you're in Montreal? Does it give you ideas for different kinds of jewelry? Gabriela: Yes, actually, my rings. I have made just three of them. I want to make 10. The concept behind the rings is winter. This is the first winter that I spent here in Montreal. What's beautiful is that it was the first time I saw snow. For me, it was beautiful. It was a big change. And it wasn't just beautiful, it was also very hard. I wanted to encapsulate this snow in these rings. They are quartz. They're carbon quartz, but the inside is similar to snow. What I wanted to create there was the idea of encapsulating snow, encapsulating that particular moment that I saw the snow on the street. They are big, they are bold. Yeah, they're big. Sharon: Do you like the snow? Can you find it in Mexico, like in the mountains or somewhere? Gabriela: Yes, you can find snow in Mexico, probably in the mountains or in the north of Mexico, like very close to the United States. But it's not like here. The winter in Montreal is very tough. I think once we were -16 Celsius, so it's very hard. Sharon: Why do you manufacture in Mexico? I assume it's less expensive to manufacture there. Gabriela: Well, my studio remains in Querétaro. My partner, Samantha, is in charge of making the pieces that can be replicated there. I'm the one in charge of overseas, making sure everything runs smoothly in Querétaro. Here, I work and make the one-of-a-kind pieces. Basically, most of the pieces are shipped from Querétaro. The silver is from Mexico. Most of the stones are from Mexico also. The pieces that I make here, most of the stones are from here or the United States. These particular pieces are shipped from here because I made them here. Sharon: How do you decide which stones in which colors? You seem to flip, using the same color but a different combination, and some are totally different. Gabriela: I think at the beginning when I didn't have a clear concept, I let the stones guide me through the combinations of the pieces. But after that, now that I have a clearer concept, I design first and then I pick the gemstones. Mexico is a country with a lot of gemstones, so I have a wide variety to choose from. I didn't have any problem finding beautiful gemstones there. But yeah, at the beginning, the stones basically guided me. I designed pieces based on the stone and the shape of the stone, then I created the pieces. Now, I've had more time designing and creating jewelry, so I first create the design and then decide which stone will be better with the design and the concept. Sharon: When you say the stones guided you, do the stones ever talk to you and tell you what they should be or what they should be combined with? Gabriela: Yes, absolutely. It's funny, but yes. It is something that I used to say. "The earnings are like this this because they told me they needed to be combined with this stone in this particular shape in this particular order." Yeah, the stones talk to me a lot. It was more at the beginning, but now they just say, "Okay, I like your design, so yes, we can go together." Sharon: Do they e

What you'll learn in this episode: How Terhi's work changed as she moved from Finland to Amsterdam to France How the weather influenced Terhi's recent exhibition at Ornamentum Gallery How jewelry can help us explore the relationship between man and nature Why Terhi creates her work on a mannequin, and how she lets materials tell her what they want to be Why love is the most important thing an artist can put in their work   About Terhi Tolvanen Currently based in the French countryside, Terhi Tolvanen was born in Helsinki, Finland (1968).  Following studies at the Lahti Design Institute, Finland, and the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, NL, Tolvanen earned a Master's Degree in Jewelry at the Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam, NL. Tolvanen's works can be found in numerous distinguished private and public collections worldwide, including the Swiss National Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum (London, UK) the Dallas Museum of Art (TX- USA) among others. Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com: Additional Resources Website Instagram   Transcript: Terhi Tolvanen's jewelry isn't made of gold or diamonds, but in its own way, it's just as precious. The Finnish jeweler uses natural materials like wood, raw minerals and shells to create jewelry that not only looks beautiful, but challenges viewers to reflect on the world around them. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how her daily walks shape her work; how living in Amsterdam and rural France have changed her jewelry over the years; and her advice for emerging artists. Read the episode transcript here. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey, exploring the hidden world of art around you. Because every piece of art has a story, and jewelry is no exception. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven't heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com. We're so glad you're here today. I'd never heard of our guest, Terhi Tolvanen, before. I don't know how I missed her jewelry because I like large, statement-type pieces, and that's what many of Terhi's pieces are. I was really taken with them. Welcome back. So, it's finding things in nature that you put together in what you call a sculpture. Terhi: Yeah, sculpture, jewelry. I do really make jewelry, but it's also all these wonderful materials that I manage to find. I'm also talking about, for example, light and movement. How do the trees, for example, move in the wind? This can be a big inspiration. Or an early summer rain, which gives a certain kind of light and color to things. I also have very many pieces where I'm talking about the metamorphosis of a flower, opening and being in full flower and then in the end fading away. The circle of life. I'm very fond of moss also, which I find very beautiful. It also talks about time because moss is growing very slowly, and it takes over places that have not been really taken care of. What is taken care of? There are cultures, like in Japan, where they think moss is very important and beautiful. They pour sour milk over stone so that moss would grow better. Whereas in Europe the moss is taken away. They have pieces where, for example, it's a moss collection. I made my own moss, or I make my own mushrooms, which are also very fascinating. Sharon: So, nature is where you get most of your inspiration from. From the things around you that other people might overlook? Terhi: Yes, it's that. Yes, I think so. The starting point is a little bit in this experience that I had when I moved to Amsterdam. In Finland, it's so normal for everybody to have nature around, and it's so very normal to go to the forest and to be able to pick berries and mushrooms and walk around. When I moved to Amsterdam, I realized that this is not at all the case over there. Everything is planted. Nothing is wild. Even the forest is planted, and you should not touch anything. So, the nature experience is totally, totally different. This was not really shocking to me, but I found it very interesting at the time. I think it's really a human need to be in touch with nature, and in a city situation, it starts on the balconies. The very first pieces I made after school were about flowerpots and balconies where people are creating their own nature spaces in a mini way. I found that very interesting. When one has a little bit more space, this becomes a garden, and there are all different kinds of gardens, very well taken care of or very wild gardens. I'm also very fond of all different garden wood. The best material for me is, for example, this curly hazelnut that has been pruned for many years, which makes it curl even more. This human interaction has been there already long before I get to this material in my hands. There are all kinds of fascinating situations with these thoughts. Sharon: Are people surprised when they look at your work, like, "What is this? This isn't jewelry. There's no diamonds or gold." What is their reaction? Terhi: Yeah, sometimes. I don't have so many new people around that I get to hear this kind of remark. But yeah, sometimes it happens like, "Really? It's very big and it must be very heavy." They find it very strange that branches can make a necklace. I have the feeling that the big question is "But where is the value?" It's easier to see the value when it's precious metal and shiny stones. Sharon: How do you introduce yourself to people who don't know you? If people ask what you do, what do you tell them? Terhi: I say I'm a jewelry artist, and then I have to explain. I say I'm a jewelry artist making contemporary jewelry because there are so many different types of jewelry. I have to explain that I'm selling my work through galleries and that there are collectors and museums buying, like it was any other art discipline like painting or sculpture. This explains the best, I think, the way I do work.  Otherwise, a remark I get very often is, "The Christmas market is very nice in that little town. Maybe this would be interesting for you." Then I have to explain that I don't make pieces in series. My pieces are always unique pieces. I make some variations, but I never really copy a piece. There are some exceptions to the rule, but I haven't done it many times. Sharon: You're in many prestigious museums around the world. That must give you a lot of credibility when you're talking to people. Terhi: Yes, of course. This is really fantastic, that my work is valued. It's very good for motivation, and, of course, it gives status. It's fantastic to be appreciated in my work. It's quite important. I would say it's very important for me, yes. Sharon: It keeps you going. The first time a museum wanted to collect your work, did they come to you? Did they see it at a show? What happened? Terhi: The museums and collectors are buying from the galleries, so I am not in direct contact with them. With the years, I have gotten to meet some of my collectors. I have quite a few in the U.S., and this is very far away. So, there are some I have never met in person. I would say I've met more in Europe at the openings. It's very nice and important to be there for my own openings and especially to meet people. Sharon: Were you excited or inspired when you heard the museum bought your first piece or your second piece? Did it keep you going? Terhi: Yes, absolutely. Yes. I have quite a good list now. I have a couple of museums I would like to have my pieces also, so I still have work to do. Sharon: You mentioned that you're very busy in the studio right now. What are you working on? Terhi: Yes, I'm always very busy. The whole year is a rhythm with solo exhibitions. For quite some years now, there's a solo exhibition in one of my galleries every year. Then I have galleries that go regularly to fairs, and I try to have some new pieces for them. Right now, I'm finishing pieces for the Pearl Exhibition at Noel Guyomarc'h in Montreal. The Pearl Exhibition is touring now in several galleries, and then each gallery is asking other artists to participate. Noel asked me, among others. Then I'm also preparing some pieces for an art fair in Amsterdam. I'm also almost done with a customer order from Ornamentum Gallery. Sharon: Would you say the market for jewelry is growing in France, or is it remaining stable? Terhi: Well, it's quite stable, I would say, for quite some time now, which means in practice that I can't really work with any new galleries on a steady basis. I do participate in group exhibitions, of course, but I have four galleries now that I work with, and they wait all the time for new pieces. So, I'm full in work all the time. Sharon: That's a nice position to be in. At what point do the stones talk to you to say, "I'm going to be a necklace," or I should be a ring or a bracelet"? Terhi: Yeah, absolutely the materials talk to me. I'm a very materialistic maker in that sense. The materials are extremely important for me. This was already the case from the beginning. I'm only getting better in it, I think, and a little bit quicker. The way it goes is that I often let the wood—the branches that have certain shapes, I let them decide what shape the necklace would be. They tell me how they would be. There is a way in this puzzle work that when they are arranged in the best way, they also talk about movement or waves or so on. The same thing with stones. For example, when I have a mineral, I carefully choose which side of this mineral I show, which is the front side, because there are differences. The back side is maybe not so nice. The color is maybe better from a certain angle. A lot also decides where I need to place the stones. For example, labradorite is very dependent on the light falling on the stone. When it is looked at from a certain direction, it gives this very strong blue and green light in the stone. This is why I turn them around. Because jewelry pieces are three dimensional when they're worn, I'm making my pieces on the ma

What you'll learn in this episode: How Terhi's work changed as she moved from Finland to Amsterdam to France How the weather influenced Terhi's recent exhibition at Ornamentum Gallery How jewelry can help us explore the relationship between man and nature Why Terhi creates her work on a mannequin, and how she lets materials tell her what they want to be Why love is the most important thing an artist can put in their work   About Terhi Tolvanen Currently based in the French countryside, Terhi Tolvanen was born in Helsinki, Finland (1968).  Following studies at the Lahti Design Institute, Finland, and the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, NL, Tolvanen earned a Master's Degree in Jewelry at the Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam, NL. Tolvanen's works can be found in numerous distinguished private and public collections worldwide, including the Swiss National Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum (London, UK) the Dallas Museum of Art (TX- USA) among others. Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com: Additional Resources Website Instagram   Transcript: Terhi Tolvanen's jewelry isn't made of gold or diamonds, but in its own way, it's just as precious. The Finnish jeweler uses natural materials like wood, raw minerals and shells to create jewelry that not only looks beautiful, but challenges viewers to reflect on the world around them. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how her daily walks shape her work; how living in Amsterdam and rural France have changed her jewelry over the years; and her advice for emerging artists. Read the episode transcript here. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey, exploring the hidden world of art around you. Because every piece of art has a story, and jewelry is no exception. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it's released later this week. We're so glad you're here today. I'd never heard of our guest, Terhi Tolvanen, before. I'll let her pronounce the name in Finnish. I don't know how I missed her jewelry because I like large, statement-type pieces, and that's what many of Terhi's pieces are. I was really taken with them. She uses a lot of materials found in nature, integrated with stones that we might see in other jewelry. Her work can be found in many prestigious museums around the world. She herself has studied in several countries, growing and perfecting her work. Today, we will learn a lot about Terhi and the inspiration and ideas you will find all around her. Welcome to the podcast, Terhi. Terhi: Thank you so much, Sharon, for inviting me. It's great to be talking with you. Sharon: I'm so glad that we have the chance to talk. Can you tell us why you moved from Finland to Amsterdam to France? Can you tell us how the materials varied in each area? Terhi: I moved away from Finland. Originally, I was supposed to be going away for only one year, but after technical school, I was missing quite a lot to learn more about the reasons why to make things. At the time in Finland, there was no possibility to continue. That's why I started looking elsewhere. I ended up then studying in Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, and I totally fell in love with the school. The one year I was supposed to stay became six years. After four years, I also did a master course over there, and after school I stayed because it was great. I fell in love with jewelry. There were galleries, there were events, there were colleagues, there were things happening. During the school years, I made a lot of friends, and I found a place to stay and all that. Now for about 10 years, I've been in France. I moved to France because of love. I fell in love. Sharon: Love, okay. And did you find materials different in each area? Terhi: The materials, yeah, of course. Moving to France has changed the accessibility to my materials totally, because I moved to the countryside from the city. This meant that I was able to use more and more branches that I could collect and find a little bit everywhere. And I've continued what I started doing already in the Netherlands for finding all my minerals and stones. I would go to mineral fairs. Now that I'm in France, I go to Paris. Sharon: Are there are a lot of materials in Paris? Do you find things to work with? Terhi: There is a quite good mineral fair once a year, in the beginning of December. I almost always have to wait one year if I want to have something or find the same thing again or find new material. When I do that, I have to count that I have enough for working for one year. I buy a lot and I don't always use everything. Sometimes it can even take up to five years before I really know what I want to do with certain minerals, but this is always very exciting for me. I'm a very big fan of minerals and stones in any shape and color and format. I have used a lot of rough minerals that I would cut just a little bit so that the dimensions would fit on a piece. For about three or four years, I've also been buying some cut stones. When I still lived in Amsterdam, I used to work with a stone cutter who would cut stones especially for me, and that was a very good cooperation. Since then, he has stopped working a little bit in that way. But he would save me things the normal goldsmiths wouldn't want to buy. He learned very quickly that was interesting for me. Mainly it was things that were a little bit different, a little bit less perfect than a traditional goldsmith would want to use. Sharon: How long have you been a maker? Did you choose it later or did you choose it when you were young? Terhi: I have been a maker since my graduation from the Sandberg Instituut. The master course in Amsterdam is called Sandberg Instituut. I graduated from there in 1999, and I had my first solo show in 2000. Of course, it took a little time to get going. But now it's 24 years ago. It's long. Sharon: And you knew when you graduated that you wanted to be a maker or a jeweler. That's what you wanted to do professionally. Terhi: Yes. I was asking this question a lot while studying. When I started studying in Amsterdam, I was absolutely convinced that I don't want to be an artist and I don't want to make jewelry. But I thought, "Never mind. I will be able to learn a lot of important things anyway at school." This meant that during a lot of school years, I was trying all kinds of different things. I was drawing a lot, I was making objects, I was working a lot with textiles, sort of half- clothes, half-sculpture pieces. And then at one moment towards the end of the master course, when it really became a reality that soon I will have to get out of the school and go into the real world, I really decided, "Okay, I will make jewelry," because my conclusion, after all these school years, was that that's the thing I can do the best. So, I really chose it. Also, because of the situation at the time in the Netherlands, it was possible to ask for working grants for jewelry arts. I had some very good school friends that were very much encouraging me to take the jewelry direction. So, yes, it was a very conscious decision at the time, and I have not regretted it. Sharon: It was long periods when you were in a country. You said you were in Amsterdam for six years. Did you teach? I don't know, maybe I have that wrong. Terhi: No, not there. I was there for school for six years altogether. Also, I stayed for the reason that it was cheaper to work at school than rent a studio. When I graduated from the Instituut, I stayed in Amsterdam because it was, work wise, very exciting to stay there. I had a job on the site. Then later I got a working grant. I had a nice studio, so I stayed in Amsterdam until 2013 when I moved to France. Sharon: I have to ask if you knew the languages before you came to each country. Well, English in Amsterdam works. What languages do you speak? Terhi: I'm multilingual. in Amsterdam I decided that I would like to learn Dutch because I thought it is very important for the quality of life. I managed to learn Dutch, so I speak Dutch quite fluently. At school it was a lot in English, of course. I speak Finnish, Dutch, English, and now in France, people don't speak so much English, so I really had to learn French. I had already studied French during all my school time in Finland, so I had a base for that, but I couldn't speak it so well. Now, of course, with all the years, I have learned to speak French. I'm teaching now in France at ENSAD Limoges, the École Nationale Supérieure d'Art et de Design, which is one of the national art schools. I'm teaching in French. Sharon: As you learned each language, did your works change? Did it make it easier to work or harder? Did you see a change in your work? Terhi: Well, living abroad, it's often lost in translation, of course. To know a language very well, you need to also understand the mentality and the culture of each country. I don't know if it's so much the language that's influencing the work. It's more the physical fact being in a certain place with certain surroundings. Of course, for me nature is very important. It's a richness, the language is. Definitely, yes. Sharon: Your most recent exhibition, I don't know if you had another one since then, but last summer you were at Ornamentum Gallery. Your work was shown at Ornamentum Gallery, which is in Massachusetts, I think. Terhi: It's in Hudson, New York. Sharon: Okay. I couldn't remember. Hudson, New York. The exhibit was called Moderate to Southwest Winds. What does that mean in jewelry? What did you think it meant? Terhi: I chose the title. It's a weather forecast. It's taken out of a weather forecast. I chose that because while working for that show, I realized that what is really making the rhythm of my work and my thinking is the weather. I go out every morning for a walk, and this is a very important moment for me depending on the face in the work. Ei

What you'll learn in this episode: How to use Antique Jewelry University to identify maker's marks and find out when your jewelry was made. Why access to more (and better) information has made interest in antique jewelry explode. What characteristics Suzanne looks for when evaluating antique jewelry. Why buyers should beware of lab-grown diamonds in vintage jewelry. Why modern diamonds and manufacturing techniques can't compare to the materials and skills used by jewelers in the past. About Suzanne Martinez Suzanne Martinez is the co-owner of Lang Antiques, a San Francisco-based shop that offers the largest collection of fine vintage engagement rings and antique jewels to be found under one roof. She is a highly credentialed senior gemologist, jewelry appraiser, jewelry historian and the curator for Lang's collection. She actively buys from sellers all over the world. Suzanne is also the founder of Lang's Antique Jewelry University. Suzanne started collecting rocks and minerals as a child, and by the time she was 13 knew that the jewelry world was her passion. For fun she makes enameled jewelry and studies natural history and Latin American cultural anthropology. Images courtesy of Lang Antique & Estate Jewelry available on TheJewelryJourney.com Additional resources: Website Suzanne's LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Antique Jewelry University Lang Antique and Estate Jewelry is the prime destination for vintage jewelry lovers, but you don't have to be in San Francisco to take advantage of the store's services. Lang ships jewelry globally and offers Antique Jewelry University, a completely free online guide to maker's marks and jewelry history. Jewelry historian and Lang co-owner Suzanne Martinez joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how Lang curates its huge collection of antique engagement rings; the history of Antique Jewelry University; and what she looks for when evaluating an antique piece. Read the episode transcript here. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey, exploring the hidden world of art around you. Because every piece of art has a story, and jewelry is no exception. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven't heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com. Today, we're talking with Suzanne Martinez of Lang Antiques in San Francisco. Welcome back. Do you manufacture yourselves? Does Lang manufacture? Suzanne: We have what we call our Lange line. Sometimes a piece of jewelry will come in and it's worn out. It doesn't have another livelihood, so we can't guarantee it to a customer. I'm talking about a ring in particular. We have, probably for more than 20 years, been making hand-fabricated rings that are in the style of or influenced by a real ring design. They're very similar to the older pieces, and we hand fabricate them. In the last few years, we've had a greater demand. People don't want to pay for the cost of having a ring hand fabricated like the originals. It's very expensive when a mounting costs more than the diamond you're setting in it, and that's not unusual. So, we have done some work with partners that do CAD that have helped us create our designs in CAD, but we do very little of that. 90% of what we do, if we're going to take an old stone and remake a ring out of it, is hand fabricated. We try and stick to the tenets of the old jewelry that we sell. Sharon: Do people come in and say, "Can you repolish this stone?" Maybe they have an old ring, a vintage ring, and the stone is beat up but they want it repolished. Suzanne: That's a really good question. The stones that get beat up are things that are not a diamond. You have to be pretty hard on a diamond to beat it up or to chip it. But sapphires, if they've been worn for 15, 20 years even, they're going to have some abrasions on them. When we buy a piece of jewelry, that's one of the things we do. We will remove those stones and repolish them before we resell them. But as far as a customer coming in with their own personal collection, we don't have an in-house lapidary, so we don't do that. There are people that specialize in and help people refurbish like that, but it's not something we offer because we don't do it in-house. Sharon: Was your business affected by COVID? Suzanne: It was actually positively affected. I think people had more time. We know they had more time at home, and I think people did a lot more screen time. We had a lot more visitors to our website, and people got very excited about antique jewelry, especially colored stones and things they could wear on a Zoom call so people could see their jewelry, like a pair of earrings or a pendant. Business increased because of that, which was very good. I think the awareness grew. People found out about antique jewelry more. Look at Instagram. Instagram is different than it was three years ago, but there were a lot of people spending a lot of time on Instagram and other social media and just watching, because it's eye candy. People come to our website for the same reason. Who doesn't like to look at beautiful jewelry? I just told this story to a customer that came in yesterday. It just came to mind. We used to keep our jewelry in our window. We used to have probably a thousand pieces in the window, tons of jewelry just packed in. I'd watch people walk by. They'd stop in the window, and then they'd walk away with a big smile on their face because jewelry makes people happy. It's beautiful. I think people gained an appreciation during that time period. Sharon: Did you see an increase in sales because people didn't have things to spend the money on? Suzanne: Well, they weren't traveling. They weren't going out to eat, so they were buying jewelry. We were lucky because part of our business is an e-commerce business, and it's something we've done for a long time. I think some of the jewelers that didn't have that ability to interact with their clients in the same way probably didn't gain from it. But it was good for our business. Sharon: When you had a thousand pieces or a lot of jewelry in the window, did you take it out every night? Suzanne: Oh yeah, every single piece. We had our windows designed so they were modular, so you could take a whole tray of jewelry out and put it on carts and take it to our walls to sell it. We made it work because if you had to take out one at a time, that would take you another couple of hours. Sharon: Do you have local people, people in San Francisco or in Northern California, who come to the store just to look at the window or to look and see what's new? Suzanne: It's really interesting, because when people come into our store, they're either going to have an appointment or we're a destination. They know who we are before they come. They might be coming to see what's new. They might be coming because they have a particular piece of jewelry they want to look at, and sometimes it's just part of their trip to San Francisco. They always come to Lang. Sharon: Do you sell things besides rings, or is it all rings or mostly rings? Suzanne: No, I would say rings are probably half of what we sell, colored stone and diamond rings, then all other kinds of jewelry. People wear brooches still, believe it or not. We sell a lot of pins and brooches. You don't see people wearing them as much, but we're bringing that back. We like them. They're beautiful, small forms of art, you know? Sharon: I was intrigued because you used the word collectors. I looked at the store and it was all rings. As I was scrolling through, it seemed like one on every two pages was something that wasn't a ring. Suzanne: Well, you have to filter, just like any website you're on. We have filters set up so that you can choose how you look at different jewelry. If you want to look at rings, if you want to dive in and just look at sapphire rings, if you want to look at Art Deco sapphire rings, you can do all of those things. You can look at all of our jewelry in one page, which is a few thousand pieces that are online. That's kind of an ominous task. So, filtering is a good way to use our website to find what you're looking for, or just to look. Like I said, it's eye candy. Sharon: How often do you get things that might not be a ring that you would put on the website or people come to the store to see? Suzanne: If you watch our What's New page, you'll see that we sell more things and post more things that are not rings. Rings are maybe 30 to 40% of what we put on our website. There are pendants, earrings, brooches, necklaces, a little bit of everything. Sharon: In reading the description of your store, that it's world renowned, it seems like you have everything related to vintage engagement rings or vintage rings. Suzanne: That is what we're known for. We have over 800 diamond rings. That's a large collection of vintage diamond rings. We've curated our collection very carefully over the years. People buy from Lang because all of our rings have been fully restored. For example, the prongs are not worn down anymore. We will replace and put new prongs on the ring. If the diamond has a small chip, we remove the diamond and we'll repair the chip before we put it back in. All of our diamonds of one carat or larger, we send to the GIA for a lab report. We do a lot of work to make sure that the ring we're selling has all the necessary information for a customer to make a decision on whether they want to buy it. When you look at an antique diamond, it has a different kind of beauty than a modern round brilliant. Most antique diamonds have a little bit of color to them. They are a J or a K color very commonly, and you have to kind of throw out the standard of the modern round brilliant-cut because you can't compare them. An old diamond has a different way of reacting with light. It breaks the light up into spectral colors more. It's just a playful, beautiful diamond, so it doesn't look like every other round bril

What you'll learn in this episode: How to use Antique Jewelry University to identify maker's marks and find out when your jewelry was made. Why access to more (and better) information has made interest in antique jewelry explode. What characteristics Suzanne looks for when evaluating antique jewelry. Why buyers should beware of lab-grown diamonds in vintage jewelry. Why modern diamonds and manufacturing techniques can't compare to the materials and skills used by jewelers in the past. About Suzanne Martinez Suzanne Martinez is the co-owner of Lang Antiques, a San Francisco-based shop that offers the largest collection of fine vintage engagement rings and antique jewels to be found under one roof. She is a highly credentialed senior gemologist, jewelry appraiser, jewelry historian and the curator for Lang's collection. She actively buys from sellers all over the world. Suzanne is also the founder of Lang's Antique Jewelry University. Suzanne started collecting rocks and minerals as a child, and by the time she was 13 knew that the jewelry world was her passion. For fun she makes enameled jewelry and studies natural history and Latin American cultural anthropology. Images courtesy of Lang Antique & Estate Jewelry available on TheJewelryJourney.com Additional resources: Website Suzanne's LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Antique Jewelry University Lang Antique and Estate Jewelry is the prime destination for vintage jewelry lovers, but you don't have to be in San Francisco to take advantage of the store's services. Lang ships jewelry globally and offers Antique Jewelry University, a completely free online guide to maker's marks and jewelry history. Jewelry historian and Lang co-owner Suzanne Martinez joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how Lang curates its huge collection of antique engagement rings; the history of Antique Jewelry University; and what she looks for when evaluating an antique piece. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it's released later this week. Today, we're talking with Suzanne Martinez of Lang Antiques in San Francisco. I should say that's where the brick and mortar is, but they sell all over the world. Lang Antiques is the country's, if not the world's, largest purveyor of vintage engagement rings. They have an unparalleled collection. Suzanne herself is a jewelry historian, among other things. Lang Antiques has developed an online Antique Jewelry University. Researchers from all over the world use this as a resource to research the history of a piece of jewelry. If you're interested in jewelry, then this makes a very good read. I was looking at it last night again, and I didn't have any piece of jewelry in mind, but it was very interesting to read. I've heard Suzanne give a talk at ASJRA, another major jewelry organization, and I've heard Suzanne give talks identifying a piece of jewelry, and she goes into tremendous detail. There's no way that you could not look at a piece of jewelry and know what you should be looking for. She'll tell us more about Antique Jewelry University. She'll also tell us how over the years, the store has become world renowned. They have done this by developing an unparalleled collection of jewelry, a reputation for professional expertise, and the longevity of this jewelry store. Suzanne, welcome to the program. Suzanne: I'm happy to be here. Good morning. Sharon: Can you tell us where the Lang in Lang Antiques and Estate Jewelry comes from? Suzanne: We bought the store from Jarmilla Lang in 1991. She was the original owner of the store and a jewelry historian herself way before her time. She had worked in Europe in museums, so she had this breadth of knowledge of decorative arts and jewelry that she brought to San Francisco with her when she opened this store. Sharon: Wow. There aren't any certificates as a jewelry historian. It's just knowledge, right? Knowledge and other people saying, "Well, you're a jewelry historian." I presume you're a gemologist also. You look at so many rings. That's very interesting. What do you say to those who would never buy a piece of jewelry online because they have to feel it and see it and all of that? Suzanne: Like you said, I am a gemologist and I have been for 45 years. Part of the gemological training is learning how to be forensic with what you're looking at. Whether it's a gemstone or a piece of jewelry, if you are buying from someone who is knowledgeable enough to understand what they're looking at and share that information with you, that gives a huge degree of trust. I think that's one thing that stands out for Lang. We have a really good understanding of whether it's a real piece of antique jewelry. How is it made? Why is this design important? Who else made this design popular over time and why? We like to give tidbits of history with every piece we sell. I do call myself a jewelry historian, but by no means do I know everything. I have a library. I haven't read every single book in my library. However, if a piece comes in and I look at it, I know which book to look for to find a reference about it. And there are many jewelry historians that I look up to. It's a community. Sharon: If I see a piece of jewelry on your website and I want to know more about it, or I want to know if I can trust this outfit If I don't know it, do I call you or send you the piece? Can you explain the process? Suzanne: If you want to know more about your own piece of jewelry, that's why we have Antique Jewelry University. It's a place where you can do your own research. We have a huge database of hallmarks because one thing that we probably get the most inquiries about is, "Who made this piece of jewelry? Here's the mark I have." We refer them to this database we have because it's pretty impressive. Auction houses and appraisers and people all over use that database. Every piece of jewelry we have with a maker's mark, we do our best to research it. It's not always easy. It's not always possible. Then we photograph it, and we include it on our website. We try and add a little snippet about who the jeweler was, where they were located, and what years they did their manufacturing. You have to match when a piece was made because some there are false marks, too. If a piece of jewelry is marked 585, which is the percentage for 14-karat gold, it was not made in the 19th century. They didn't mark jewelry like that. There is that forensic bit, too. Hopefully we can help people down that path. We call it the jewelry journey. We do. It's finding out when their jewelry was made. If they want to find out more about a piece of jewelry we have on our website that they might be interested in buying, we invite inquiries. We talk to them over the phone or by email, whatever they're comfortable with, and try and satisfy all their questions about it and add information as well. Sharon: Did you develop the online Antique Jewelry University yourself? Suzanne: When we started our website, that was back in 1998. We were kind of early adapters. There were no e-commerce platforms at that time, so we developed our own e-commerce platform. By the early 2000s, we were actually selling online. When we launched our website, Antique Jewelry University was a 1000-word glossary. I had been collecting terms. Christie Romero was an incredible jewelry historian. She was here in Southern California, and she taught jewelry history. I don't remember which college it was down there, but she would put on symposiums and bring speakers in. Anyway, incredible woman. She started a glossary of terms and a timeline that, when she passed—unfortunately, she's no longer with us—she gifted to Antique Jewelry University. So, between her information and my glossary of terms, we started Antique Jewelry University and just built upon it. Sharon: Do you continue to build upon it if you see a new term or something you haven't included before? Suzanne: Absolutely. We are always researching. We have a woman who does a lot of our writing. Her name is Mary Borchert, and that is her job, just doing research. We have quite a library of reference books, so everything that we put on Antique Jewelry University is fully referenced. We notate that at the bottom of all our articles as well. We're not just copying it from somewhere else on the internet, which a lot of people do, and a lot of people copy Antique Jewelry University. That can be a compliment, but at the same time, we do all of our own work. Sharon: That's impressive, considering how in-depth it is. Just look at it online. Why do you think that the interest in antique jewelry has grown so much in the past few years? Suzanne: I think there's a lot of transparency. A lot of people are able to access information because of the advent of social media. Just think of all the people that are sharing their own personal information. We are on all the different social media channels as well, and I've seen them grow. If you have an interest in a particular type, like Art Nouveau jewelry, you can find Art Nouveau jewelers that have Instagram or Pinterest and look at beautiful jewelry and learn about it. In the past, when I started as a jeweler, if you didn't have a library, there was no place to go. You went to a museum, and that's where you found your information. Now I think it's a rich time for people to access information. I think we also visually see antique and vintage jewelry worn on the red carpet, at the Met Gala, and we see jewelry that is inspired by antique jewelry. You have famous houses. Everybody knows who Cartier is. You have the most beautiful antique Cartier jewelry, and then you have people that have copied it. That's a big tribute, but you don't always know if it's a Cartier or it isn't. That's why it's important who you buy it from. But at the same time, it's

What you'll learn in this episode: Why working with jewelry designers is part business, part therapy. Why the jewelry industry is picking up its pace to match the fashion industry, and why this trend might backfire. Why customer feedback on comfort and wearability is essential for jewelry brands. How Lionel defines success for his jewelry clients. What caused so many fashion houses to develop fine jewelry lines in the last few years, and what this trend means for the industry.  About Lionel Geneste Lionel Geneste is a fashion and luxury industry veteran, having worked for John Hardy, Givenchy, Catherine Malandrino and Randolph Duke in various capacities, from global marketing to communications and merchandising. He is also the founder of the gift-giving service b.Sophisticated. Born in Tehran to French parents, Geneste grew up as a modern nomad: Cairo, Istanbul, Lagos, Beirut, Paris are just a few places he once called home. And so he acquired an eclectic eye, at an early age, for the refined and urbane—only further encouraged by his clotheshorse mother and her like-minded friends. Additional Resources Website Instagram Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: How does an independent jewelry brand get noticed? For some lucky jewelers, the secret is Lionel Geneste. Lionel is a jewelry strategist and advisor who has launched iconic brands, shown new collections at Paris couture week, and gotten small jewelry artists into top stores. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how the jewelry industry compares to the fashion industry; the trends, opportunities and challenges jewelers are facing today; and how he chooses his clients (and why he has to believe in their work). Read the episode transcript here. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey, exploring the hidden world of art around you. Because every piece of art has a story, and jewelry is no exception. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven't heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com. Today, I'm talking with Lionel Geneste. He's an independent strategist in the jewelry industry. He does this after 15 years in fashion, so he knows fashion and jewelry. Welcome back. Let's say people haven't seen the lines of these jewels or the independent jewelers that you represent. Do they say, "Oh, I haven't seen this. I want it for my store"? Lionel: Right. They do that. Everybody has access to everything pretty much now, with Instagram or even stores posting on their websites. I tend to have a collection or a certain number of pieces with me, and then I distribute it amongst the stores I work with. I still give the list of everything I have within the U.S. So, if a client has seen something and it's not within their store, I will send it to them to present to the client. It's very interesting. Once the client knows the brand, they really go for it. They dig into the Instagram to see other pieces. I think you have to be very fluid and flexible, and you have to be able to move around your jewelry if you want to accommodate your plan. Sharon: What are the first things you advise people, your new clients, on? Is it to get involved with social media? Lionel: I know we all hear the stories of people selling off Instagram. I think the brick and mortar is still—at a certain level, we're talking about jewelry. It's different below $8,000. It's very rare when someone buys it from a website. Even a website like Moda Operandi, for example, if there is a piece— Sharon: Which one? Lionel: Moda Operandi. It's a website that was launched on the idea of doing trunk shows on there. For example, they will very often ask for the piece to be sent so they can show it to their clients. It's rare that they buy it directly off the website. I think for pieces that are $500 to $2,000, maybe $3,000, but above a certain price, the clients want to see it, feel it. Sharon: And touch it. When you look for new clients, what do you look for? What would you consider new? Would you consider if the way they make it is new? Lionel: There are there a few things. If I take them, for example, Mike Joseph is very interesting. He has great technique. The jewelry is going to be well made. He made this entire collection of flowers in titanium, but he used the reverse side of titanium to have it as a matte finish, as opposed to a very glossy one. I think with this collection, when he was at couture, he won two prizes. So, I think he is both innovative and has great technique. Vishal, I like his take on traditional Indian jewelry, which has a lot of gold and stones, but he makes it much more sleek. The thing is not to see the metal. I don't know if you're familiar with the portrait cut. Sharon: No, I'm not. Lionel: The portrait cut is a slab of diamond. It's the Maharaja who built the Taj Mahal who actually asked his jeweler to do this type of slab of diamonds to put on top of their portraits so it would bring a shine to the miniature. So, it's a technique, and Vishal does rings and earrings. I think that's an interesting new way. I'm always looking for people who bring something new to the table. Sharon: You mentioned the perspective. How could their perspective be new? When you talk to other art jewelers, sometimes you look at a piece and it looks normal, then they tell you the stories behind it and you understand it better. Lionel: True. You can always try to understand the story. When you see Vishal make some of these pieces, I think you almost don't need the explanation. You see that there is something new there. I'm not saying it's wrong to try to have the story behind it, but I kind of like when—I've had numerous jewelers come in. They're coming to me and showing me things, and the thing I hear the most is, "I couldn't find this on the market." And I look at the pieces, and I'm like, "I can bring you in 10 stores when there's exactly the same thing." And I think, "No." Sharon: So it's their technique with the materials they use. Lionel: The technique, the material, the inspiration. With Vishal it's the reinterpretation of traditional Indian jewelry, but it's still very modern and light. Sylvie has more inspiration from literature or drawings. She goes to museums to find her inspiration. Sharon: I was just thinking, do you represent people who are goldsmiths themselves making the jewelry, as opposed to them designing it and they have a goldsmith make it? Lionel: Mike and Vishal have their own factories, so they are really following from the beginning, from the start. Sylvie has an atelier. She draws. Sharon: Were you a maker of jewelry? Lionel: No. Never. I've always liked jewelry, but I was never a jewelry maker. Sharon: Have you learned over the years how something is made? Lionel: Yes. I've learned more about the stones. I've learned more about the techniques. It's important to sell something, as you said earlier, to bring the most information. People are really curious today about how it's made and the story behind it. Sharon: No matter who your client is, are they interested in the way it's made? Do they ask you questions? Lionel: There are different profiles. People who just respond to the look of it are not curious, and it depends on the jewelry itself. With Vishal, because of this new way and this new cut of diamond, people are asking. It's always interesting to get the background on it because there is a new historical background. Mike, for example, with his flowers connection, people were really intrigued by the use of titanium and how it was not used traditionally. So, yes, you get questions on that. Sharon: How often do you see something new that you haven't seen before? Is it once a year? Lionel: It's rare, actually, when you see people who are bringing something really new, a new proposal. Some people are doing stuff in a great way. Not everything has to be groundbreaking, and I get that. I go to couture every year, so I kind of scout, but just for myself. I like to see what's going on. That's not where I'm going to have a new client or anything. It's interesting to me to see what's new. Sometimes I see someone, and I refer them to all the stores, saying, "You should go and see that brand. It's really cool. It's new." Sharon: Do you advise a store to go look at the different jewelry? Lionel: Yeah, I would, even if I don't work with them. I think stores appreciate that I do that. I think the one thing I'm known for is taking on brands that are different and unique. When I point out someone that I think is great, they will listen. Sharon: Do you only work with people who work in gold or emeralds? You mentioned John Hardy. He only works in silver. Lionel: No. For John Hardy, I went for the one-of-a-kind collection that was very stone oriented. No, I don't. The next big thing I did, I worked with Hearts on Fire, which was kind of relaunching and just hired a new designer. That was very interesting, to work with a big company. The idea of bringing this new designer on and kind of starting from scratch was an interesting thing. We worked on opening different stores and more classic, more bridal. That was an interesting strategy to implement. Sharon: Did you advise them of a designer or did you walk in and they introduced you to a new designer? Lionel: They already had the designer in mind, so we looked at the collection. They asked me about their archive and what I thought they should bring back on. I think my background with fashion and jewelry always interests people because they know I still have a foot in the fashion industry in a way. Sharon: If somebody is in the fashion industry now, can they segue?  How can they segue to doing what you're doing if they got tired of fashion? Lionel: I think I know people who did the transition from fashion to jewelry. In the end, it's the same actors. In the press and the stores, it's the same people, except for the jewelry stores. But if you talk

What you'll learn in this episode: Why working with jewelry designers is part business, part therapy. Why the jewelry industry is picking up its pace to match the fashion industry, and why this trend might backfire. Why customer feedback on comfort and wearability is essential for jewelry brands. How Lionel defines success for his jewelry clients. What caused so many fashion houses to develop fine jewelry lines in the last few years, and what this trend means for the industry.  About Lionel Geneste Lionel Geneste is a fashion and luxury industry veteran, having worked for John Hardy, Givenchy, Catherine Malandrino and Randolph Duke in various capacities, from global marketing to communications and merchandising. He is also the founder of the gift-giving service b.Sophisticated. Born in Tehran to French parents, Geneste grew up as a modern nomad: Cairo, Istanbul, Lagos, Beirut, Paris are just a few places he once called home. And so he acquired an eclectic eye, at an early age, for the refined and urbane—only further encouraged by his clotheshorse mother and her like-minded friends. Additional Resources Website Instagram     Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: How does an independent jewelry brand get noticed? For some lucky jewelers, the secret is Lionel Geneste. Lionel is a jewelry strategist and advisor who has launched iconic brands, shown new collections at Paris couture week, and gotten small jewelry artists into top stores. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how the jewelry industry compares to the fashion industry; the trends, opportunities and challenges jewelers are facing today; and how he chooses his clients (and why he has to believe in their work). Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it's released later this week. Today, I'm talking with Lionel Geneste. He's an independent strategist in the jewelry industry. He does this after 15 years in fashion, so he knows fashion and jewelry. He's multi-lingual, and he represents many people abroad in the U.S., which is very, very unusual. In fact, I met him through an independent jeweler, and I thought he had such an interesting background I wanted to talk to him more. Lionel, welcome to the program. Lionel: Sharon, good morning. Thank you for having me. Sharon: I'm really glad to have you. How did you come into this business? Lionel: Well, I was in the fashion industry, then a friend of mine was taking over John Hardy. We're talking about 2006 or 2007. They were launching a one-of-a-kind collection, and they brought me on board to launch that collection and to develop it and then basically to do all the PR for John Hardy in general. Sharon: I'm not familiar with John Hardy. Is it fashion? Go ahead. Lionel: John Hardy is this company that does mostly silver. They're based in Bali. All their ateliers are in Bali and they have a big office in New York. John Hardy himself wanted to do a collection for his wife, which would be only one of a kind. That's when we started that collection called Cinta, which means love in Balinese. People were noticing these rings, and the people from Neiman Marcus noticed them and asked if we could develop them into a full collection, which we did. I'd been more in fashion, in the couture world, and I thought I could do something. Basically, the ladies that were willing to wait for four months for a dress are also willing to have one-of-a-kind jewelry or even preorder them. Sharon: You know, when you tell me who it is, I remember who John Hardy is, but I haven't seen his jewelry for a while. It's around. So, those are your clients? Are they mostly women? Do you represent any men? Lionel: Yeah. These were the clients. The idea at the beginning, when I developed it, is I would do dinners in Paris during the couture shows, and we would present the jewelry. That was pretty much how it all started. If you look at it now, all the jewelry houses are doing presentations during the couture shows. A couple of weeks ago it was in Paris and everybody from Boucheron, Dior etc., presented their collection.  It's on the same calendar. From then on, when I left John Hardy, I started a company with a business partner. The idea was that we were giving our clients not only the PR aspect and marketing, but also the business, because I was well versed in the business side as well. It was a kind of a one stop shop. Sharon: I'm not familiar with the couture shows. Does the jewelry have a separate presentation? Lionel: Yeah. The couture shows, it's like when the houses like Valentino, Dior, Chanel, it's all their shows that are only one of a kind. There are very strict rules that are enacted by the Chambre de Commerce in Paris. You have to have a number of atelier, you have to have a number of people working in the atelier, it's all handmade, etc. There was a parallel with the ladies buying those clothes that are much more expensive than ready to wear and the jewelry industry, and I think everybody made the same link between those. Now, these shows are every year in January and July. The houses like Boucheron, Chanel, Chaumet, all of them hold presentations and invite the press, but also invite clients at the same time. Sharon: So, they show their most expensive jewelry. Lionel: Yes. It's really the high jewelry collections that are shown there. Sharon: Is there somebody showing them, presenting them, or is it just come and look and see? Lionel: No, they are usually elaborate with more and more, actually. Everything is an experience. More and more they're doing elaborate dinners. For example, Boucheron at the Place Vendôme has dedicated the last floor to a big dining room, and there's also a suite. The best clients can come stay at Boucheron and stay in the building. The view on Place Vendôme is beautiful. So, now it's more a presentation with the designer himself or herself inviting their best customer, or hoping to get the best customer. Sharon: Do you invite these customers? Lionel: I used to do that a lot. I haven't done it in a year. Usually, I work with younger designers or independent and smaller designers, so I don't have the same budget. But usually what I do is I find a new, typical French bistro. I used to do it the night before the shows to make it something very informal, but still presenting the collection in a different format. Sharon: Is that how people found you? They come to these dinners? Lionel: When we talk about clients, there are two different kinds of clients. There are my clients who are the jewelers that I represent, and then I'm talking about clients who are the people who buy the jewelry. Basically, it's word of mouth. When I work with jewelers, some stores recommend me to other brands. Some clients know about someone who's launching a new brand and they refer me. That's really where I enter the competition. I make a proposal, and it's more about that and referrals. Sharon: Do you advise the high-end buyers of jewelry? Do you advise them? You say you have two kinds of clients. Lionel: Yeah, I have some clients that are collectors. Not everyone is always looking for newness or paying attention to that. So, yes, I do advise them on what I think is a young designer that's upcoming, and if they're serious about their collection, I think they should have a piece of that person in their collection. I launched Emmanuel Tarpin, for example, and at the time everybody wanted his earrings to be part of their collection. Sharon: Who did you say? Lionel: Emmanuel Tarpin. He's been having a lot of press lately. He's launched a collection of orchids. I don't work with them anymore, but I launched him at the beginning. Sharon: Do you have to like the people that you work with? Lionel: Absolutely. I do have to like the product. I couldn't sell something that I don't believe in. Sharon: Do you ever work with men? Do they come to you for advice? Lionel: They do. However, I find most men—no, I do, actually. I have some men that come, or they are strongly recommended by their wives. A lot of my clients are women who buy for themselves. Sharon: Okay, so they find out about you through word of mouth, or do you advertise? Lionel: But also, I do work with stores. Some of my jewelers are in stores such as Just One Eye in Los Angeles, Cayen in Carmel, Mayfair Rocks in East Hampton. I choose strategically the partnerships and in places where I know we're going to find the right client. Sharon: I bet your clients, they're abroad and you represent them in the states. Lionel: Yes. Some of them I represent worldwide. I represent them also in Europe, in London and Paris.  At the moment for my clients, I work with Sylvie Corbelin. That's how we met, you and I. Sylvie is based in Paris. I work with a brand that's new-ish called Mike Joseph, and it was a big success at couture last year. He is based in Bangkok. Then I represent Vishal Anil Kothari, who is based in Mumbai. It's kind of a take on traditional Indian jewelry but with a much lighter frame. They use portrait-cut diamonds, emeralds. Sharon: Do people find out about you? It seems like everybody is not finding out about you through shows or their friends. Lionel: You know, friends, clients, stores, owners. They see how I work with them and recommend me to other people. I have younger friends in the industry that just started their business and ask me for advice. They recommend me or hire me. Sharon: You travel a lot because you have addresses in New York, L.A., Paris. Lionel: I was based in New York for 20 years. I moved to L.A. six years ago. I still go to New York quite often. Sharon: But you were born in Paris or in France? Lionel: I'm French. My parents traveled a lot, so I was born a bit by accident in Tehran, in Iran. But I'm French. I studied in France. Sharon: Do you feel stretched? Whe

What you'll learn in this episode: What to expect at the second Lisbon Contemporary Jewelry Biennial and tips for attending. How Portugal's 48-year authoritarian regime and the Carnation Revolution continue to influence Portuguese artists and jewelers today. Why jewelry is so closely linked to power and politics. How artists can use masterclasses and workshops to refocus their work. How Marta is working to promote Portugal's art jewelry scene.   About Marta Costa Reis Marta Costa Reis started studying jewelry in 2004, as a hobby, in parallel with other professional activities. She dedicated herself fully to this work in 2014. Costa Reis completed the jewelry course at Ar.Co – Centro de Arte e Comunicacção Visual, in Lisbon, and the Advanced Visual Arts Course at the same school, in addition to workshops with renowned teachers including Iris Eichenberg, Ruudt Peters, Lisa Walker, and Eija Mustonen, among others. In addition to being a jewelry artist, Costa Reis teaches jewelry history at Ar.Co, writes about jewelry, and curates exhibitions. She also serves as artistic director of the Lisbon Contemporary Jewelry Biennial and as a board member of Art Jewelry Forum. Additional Resources: Marta's Website Marta's Instagram   Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: How does jewelry symbolize power, and where do jewelry and politics intersect? That's the central question that Marta Costa Reis and her fellow curators, artists and speakers will explore at this year's Lisbon Contemporary Jewelry Biennial. Marta joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about why this year's theme is so timely; how Portugal's turbulent political history influences jewelry today; and how to plan your trip to make the most of the biennial. Read the episode transcript here. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey, exploring the hidden world of art around you. Because every piece of art has a story, and jewelry is no exception.   Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven't heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com. Today, we're going to be talking about the Lisbon Contemporary Jewelry Biennial. I am talking with Marta Costa Reis, who is going to tell us all about it. Welcome back.   Sharon: Are you a maker?   Marta: I am a maker.   Sharon: Have you been developing jewelry that's linked to power?   Marta: Actually, not so much. My themes are a bit more, maybe spiritual is the word. I don't know. I'm interested in themes that revolve around time and our connection to time and what is behind us. It's quite different, but this was already the theme of the first biennial. We have to move on and have different themes. Of course, I couldn't do work myself for this biennial. I don't have the time or the mindset to be making at this time. I'm fully focused on the biennial.   Sharon: I was noticing you have several curators. How did you choose the curators of different seminars and exhibits? How did you choose them?   Marta: I can speak, for instance, about the main show that is called Madrugada, daybreak. The main title. I wanted someone that was not a Portuguese person so we don't stay too closed in our own bubble. I wanted someone from another country but who could understand what happened here. Mònica Gaspar is Spanish. Besides being an amazing intellectual and teacher and writer and very knowledgeable about jewelry and design, being Spanish, they had a similar process as ours. They also had a very long dictatorship, and at almost the same time as we did, they became a democracy. So, she could understand more or less the same events. That was important, to have someone with that experience of changing from the dictatorship into a democracy.    We spoke last year Schmuck in Munich about it, and she was interested, but she has a lot of work, so it took a little while to convince her. It's because we are a team and we can share the work that were able to do it and Mònica is able to do it. Patrícia Domingues is the other curator. She's Portuguese, but she's younger than we are.   Sharon: Who is that?   Marta: Patrícia Domingues. She recently had a show in Brooklyn. I can write it down for you later, maybe afterwards.   Sharon: Okay. Patrícia. How do you spell the last name?   Marta: Domingues, D-O-M-I-N-G-U-E-S. I think I got it right. I know how to spell it, but sometimes saying it in English is more difficult. She has been living abroad for a quite a long time, but she's Portuguese, so she has a perspective that is both an insider but also an outsider. I wanted that very much, someone that is not closed here in our little bubble. She's she recently finished a Ph.D. She's younger. She's very much in contact with everything that is being reflected about jewelry in the world right now.    I think they are amazing curators, and they bring a lot to the biennial and to the show. I am there as well not only because I enjoy it, but I wanted to help out with the work, sending the invitations and keeping track of everything so that everything goes smoothly. We are a very small organization, and we do a lot of it ourselves on a voluntary basis. We have to take different jobs in this process. But I'm happy they joined us, and I'm very happy to be working with them on this show.   Sharon: Are you the main curator? Is there a main curator who chose the other ones?   Marta: Yes, that is me. I am the main curator for the whole biennial. Then there is a team and we discuss. We basically invited Mònica and Patrícia and they agreed. The other shows, for instance, the tiara show is curated by Catarina Silva, who is also the head of the jewelry department at ARCO. I'm also taking care of, it's called Jewels for Democracy. That's the show that I mentioned about the women being honored. There's a lot of people involved, but it's quite smooth.   Sharon: Somebody has to keep everything moving and coordinate. How are you promoting the show in Portugal and in general? Anything?   Marta: We will start promoting now. We have the two shows in April. We did the launch last November for the whole biennial. We try to be active on Instagram. Not so much on Facebook, but mainly on Instagram. We will start a more intense campaign. We have a professional communications person that will take care of this. We will start a more intense communication campaign very soon. We have it in two parts, so we are focusing on April. Then we'll have the other show in May, and then it's the end of June. It will be in different parts.    We will also announce the masterclasses very soon. I haven't mentioned the masterclasses yet. That's what I was forgetting. There will be two masterclasses, one with Lin Cheung and one with Manuel Vilhena from the 22nd to 26th of June. We'll open the registrations very, very soon. This week we'll open the registration. You'll start seeing more about it, and we will promote it in different venues. I did an interview for SMCK Magazine, the European magazine about jewelry. It just came out in their last issue. I did it in October or at the end of September, but it just came out. So, we're doing a number of things, but it will become more intense at the end of this month, in February. We will reinforce the communication and the advertising.    Sharon: How long are the shows in the biennial? Does it go through the summer, or is there an ending point or beginning point?   Marta: The main thing is that in the last week of June, everything will be open. The shows in the Royal Treasure Museum, the shows at the Design Museum, the colloquium, the schools, the masterclasses, the students, the galleries. Everything will be open in that last week of June. That will be the right moment to come to Lisbon. That's when we are concentrating everything. On the 30th of June, the two shows at the Royal Treasure Museum will close, but the show at MUDE, the Design Museum, will continue until the end of September, so it will go through the summer.   Sharon: Why do you call it a masterclass? Who's teaching it and what are they teaching?   Marta: It's Lin Cheung. She's from the UK. Manuel Vilhena is a quite well-known Portuguese artist and amazing teacher as well. It's five days. I'm not sure how to differentiate between a workshop and a masterclass, which I guess is a workshop with the masters, and they are masters. They are some of the top teachers I know. I did a small course with Manuel Vilhena a few years ago. Not yet with Lin, but I know they are amazing teachers. I'm sure everyone who comes will enjoy it.    Last biennial, we also had masterclasses, one with Caroline Broadhead and the other with Christoph Zellweger. They are very interesting moments of sharing and learning and deepening your understanding of your own work, not just for students but for artists in every moment of their careers. It's super interesting to be able to have these few days to stop and look at what you do, what you want to do next with very good teachers like they are. This can be a very special moment. For a long time, I did as many workshops and masterclasses as I could, and it was so great.   Sharon: The people who teach the classes, do they vet the people coming, or can anybody who wants to come into the class and take it?   Marta: There is a small vetting process, but basically you send a CV and your motivation, not even a letter, but a few words of why you want to do these classes. That will be the vetting process. But it's pretty much open to everyone in every stage of their education or career.   Sharon: The exhibits and going to galleries, are there charges? Are they free? What is the story with that?   Marta: To visit the galleries, some of the venues will be free. The museums have tickets, but most of the venues that are not museums are free.   Sharon: MUDE is the design museum that just opened.   Marta: Yes. It opened a while ago, but it was under renovation for a long time. It's the only museum in

What you'll learn in this episode: What to expect at the second Lisbon Contemporary Jewelry Biennial and tips for attending. How Portugal's 48-year authoritarian regime and the Carnation Revolution continue to influence Portuguese artists and jewelers today. Why jewelry is so closely linked to power and politics. How artists can use masterclasses and workshops to refocus their work. How Marta is working to promote Portugal's art jewelry scene.   About Marta Costa Reis Marta Costa Reis started studying jewelry in 2004, as a hobby, in parallel with other professional activities. She dedicated herself fully to this work in 2014. Costa Reis completed the jewelry course at Ar.Co – Centro de Arte e Comunicacção Visual, in Lisbon, and the Advanced Visual Arts Course at the same school, in addition to workshops with renowned teachers including Iris Eichenberg, Ruudt Peters, Lisa Walker, and Eija Mustonen, among others. In addition to being a jewelry artist, Costa Reis teaches jewelry history at Ar.Co, writes about jewelry, and curates exhibitions. She also serves as artistic director of the Lisbon Contemporary Jewelry Biennial and as a board member of Art Jewelry Forum. Additional Resources: Marta's Website Marta's Instagram   Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: How does jewelry symbolize power, and where do jewelry and politics intersect? That's the central question that Marta Costa Reis and her fellow curators, artists and speakers will explore at this year's Lisbon Contemporary Jewelry Biennial. Marta joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about why this year's theme is so timely; how Portugal's turbulent political history influences jewelry today; and how to plan your trip to make the most of the biennial. Read the episode transcript here. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey, exploring the hidden world of art around you. Because every piece of art has a story, and jewelry is no exception. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it's released later this week. Today, we're going to be talking about the Lisbon Contemporary Jewelry Biennial. I am talking with Marta Costa Reis, who is going to tell us all about it. I met Marta about eight to 5 years ago at the first biennial in Lisbon, Portugal. One of the goals was to gather together examples and information about the history of modern Portugal and the jewelry that's associated with it. When we think of Portuguese jewelry, we don't automatically think of art jewelry. But it has a history of more than several decades about the work that's been going on and art jewelry in general. The second Lisbon Contemporary Jewelry Biennial is coming up this summer in Lisbon. The last one was held in Lisbon, too. Marta Costa Rice is going to be telling us about this biennial and what to expect this summer in Lisbon. There will be a lot going on in many venues. There is the exhibition at MUDE, which is a very well-known Portuguese design museum. There's an international symposium with people coming from all over the world to discuss the theme of the exhibition, which I'll let Marta tell you about. A lot is taking place at many of the galleries. One of the key exhibits is taking place at the Royal Treasure Museum. But I don't want to steal Marta's spotlight. Today, she'll tell us all about the second Contemporary Jewelry Biennial in Portugal. Marta, welcome to the program. Marta: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me and for this very nice introduction. So, where should I start? I don't even know. There's so much to tell. I'm currently organizing the second Lisbon Contemporary Jewelry Biennial. I do it as a new chairwoman of PIN, which is a Portuguese contemporary jewelry association. Sharon: PIN, P-I-N? Marta: PIN, yes. PIN has existed now for 20 years. It will be 20 years this September. It was created to organize quite a big event. At the time, Cristina Filipe was one of the founders and was the chairwoman for a very long time. Of course, you know her by the Susan Beach Grant. She received the first Susan Beech Grant for Mid-Career Artists, and that allowed us to publish a book which came from Cristina's Ph.D. about Portuguese jewelry, contemporary jewelry in Portugal. That time, when the book was published, that's when she had traveled to Portugal and we met. We had this challenge for ourselves, saying that if we managed to do a good program to present interesting shows, good visits, we could be able to do a biennial. That's its inspiration, this trip, how all this came to happen. Of course, the timing for the first biennial—we called it the AJF trip. It was like year zero, the pilot episode. The first biennial happened in the middle of the pandemic, so we were never sure that we really would be able to make it happen because there was still a lot of restrictions. But luckily it happened in September 2021, when people were able to travel a little bit. Then we managed to have a huge number of artists and collectors and interesting people. The theme was about the pandemic. It was jewelry of protection and connecting contemporary objects, contemporary jewelry of protection in the 21st century with very old relics and sacred objects that were shown together in an exhibition in a museum here in Lisbon. Of course, we did call it the biennial to force ourselves to do the second one. Sharon: I wanted to ask, what does biennial mean, literally? Marta: It's supposed to be every two years. That that's what it means. It's supposed to happen every two years. Of course, it's a little bit more than two years now. It's two years and a half between the first one and the second one. But because we have this idea to always have as a theme for the biennial something that is happening in the world at the moment. The first one was the pandemic. Now in Portugal 2024, we will have this very important event, which is the 50th anniversary of our revolution when we became a democratic country. I don't know if people are aware that we had an authoritarian regime for 48 years, and it happened in 1974. It was a very smooth revolution. Let's just say that, because it happened without almost any gun being shot. Of course, it took a little while. The Democratic constitution was approved a bit later, but that is the fundamental moment when we became a democratic country or started to become a democratic country. It happened 50 years ago now, so it's really a whole new generation, a whole new world, and we want to celebrate that. Jewelry, of course, has a lot to do with power or representations of power. There is also in contemporary jewelry a lot of political work. Many artists do work that is political or can be read in a political way. We wanted to consider those issues, jewelry of power and political jewelry. That's basically the idea of how it came about. Sharon: Why is it called the Carnation Revolution? Marta: That's an amazing story, actually. It happened because literally a woman that had some red carnations in her hands started to put carnations, the flowers, in the guns of the soldiers. Some of the most famous images of the revolution are soldiers with the flowers in their guns. It represents a lot of things, namely that the guns were not being shot. They were holding flowers. It happened by accident. It's suggested that this lady, apparently one of the soldiers asked her for a cigarette. She said she didn't have cigarettes, but she had a flower, and she put the flower in his gun. And then people started to replicate the gesture. Until today, the red carnation--there were also white carnations, but basically the red carnation is still very much a symbol of that movement, that revolution, and it took the name. For us, thinking about that, the gesture she had is also very much a gesture of adornment, the gesture of adorning that gun with the flower. So, we wanted to pick up on that and what it could mean. Sharon: How is jewelry linked to power? Marta: You have that example, for instance, in the Royal Treasure Museum that you mentioned, which shows the jewelry of the national treasure, jewels that belonged to the state—well, to the crown, basically. Some of them were private jewelry worn by kings and queens. Some of them are more royal estate jewelry. Basically, it's that representation of the power that it can show and the time when diamonds and precious stones and even precious metals were not used by everyone. It showed how powerful a person was, how important or how close to the eye of power. It's the idea of a crown or a tiara, of a whole set of diamonds, but also all the objects that you can put on your body, like the jeweled swords and things like that. Jewelry indeed has a lot to say about power, how you show yourself as a person of power or representing a situation of power, being a king or queen or someone with a very high responsibility. That connection always existed. This museum is brand new. It will be two years ago in June. This jewelry was not accessible. It was not shown for a very long time. It was only in a temporary exhibition, so it's an excellent opportunity to see these pieces that are absolutely incredible. Although many were lost and sold, they're still a very nice collection. Sharon: So, a biennial can be anything, theoretically. Every 10 years, it could be trucks. It could be jewelry, but it could be a biennial about anything, right? Marta: We tried to connect it to things that are ongoing in the world at the moment. For 2024, our main motivation with this event was that we knew it would happen in Portugal. There will be a lot of other moments of celebration of democracy, basically. That that's what the celebration is all about. But if you look at the world at large, it's also very topical, this issue and the themes. It's something that people can relate to at the present moment, not just Portuguese. That's what we tho

\   Transcript: Auctions, appraisals, and the professionals who perform them are some of the most misunderstood elements of the jewelry industry. That's exactly why Gina D'Onofrio, independent appraiser and Co-Director of Fine Jewelry at Heritage Auctions, joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast. She discussed what a consigner can expect when selling jewelry with an auction house; how appraisers come up with values (and why they might change); and how consumers can protect themselves by asking their appraiser the right questions. Read the episode transcript here. What you'll learn in this episode: What questions to ask appraisers and auction houses before selling your jewelry. What education and networking opportunities an aspiring appraiser should seek out. Why an appraisal includes multiple values, and why those values will change depending on the reason for the appraisal. What the process of selling jewelry with an auction house is like, and why you might choose an auction house over selling online or to a store. What a qualified appraiser will look for while inspecting a piece of jewelry.   About Gina D'Onofrio With work in the retail, auction and manufacturing sectors of the jewelry industry since 1989, Gina D'Onofrio's experience encompasses jewelry design and production, appraisals, buying and selling of contemporary, antique and period jewelry, sales and management. Gina operates an independent gemological laboratory, appraisal service and consulting firm and has been catering to private individuals, banks, trusts, non-profit organizations, insurance companies, legal firms and the jewelry trade in the greater Los Angeles area. Gina received her Master Gemologist Appraiser® designation, upon completion of appraisal studies, written and practical examinations and peer appraisal report review with the American Society of Appraisers. In addition, she was awarded the Certified Master Appraiser designation with the National Association of Jewelry Appraisers. In 2013 Gina received Los Angeles Magazine's coveted "Best in LA" award for her Jewelry Appraisal Services. She conducts presentations and entertaining speeches about appraisal and jewelry related topics to private and corporate groups in Los Angeles and throughout the USA.   Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Additional Resources: Website Instagram Facebook Email   Transcript: Auctions, appraisals, and the professionals who perform them are some of the most misunderstood elements of the jewelry industry. That's exactly why Gina D'Onofrio, independent appraiser and Co-Director of Fine Jewelry at Heritage Auctions, joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast. She discussed what a consigner can expect when selling jewelry with an auction house; how appraisers come up with values (and why they might change); and how consumers can protect themselves by asking their appraiser the right questions. Read the episode transcript here. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey, exploring the hidden world of art around you. Because every piece of art has a story, and jewelry is no exception.   Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven't heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com.    Today, I am glad to welcome back Gina D'Onofrio, an appraiser who just returned from being an independent appraiser. She returned to the auction house Heritage as co-director of jewelry. She was also on the podcast in the very beginning, and it's good to have her on again. Welcome back.   If you become a certain kind of appraiser, let's say real estate or antique jewelry or I'll call it regular jewelry, how do you continue your education in those areas? What do you do if you're a real estate appraiser and you want to be an expert, or an antique expert? What would you do to continue education in that area?   Gina: You mentioned real estate. So, you mean you're appraising houses and all of a sudden you want to appraise antique jewelry?   Sharon: No, if you're in a particular area, is what I mean. You work in jewelry. What do you do to further your education besides going to the conferences, handling the jewelry? Are there other things you can do to further your education in those areas? In that area, I should say.   Gina: If you're working in jewelry, you're basically filling all the educational holes that you might have. When you say you work in jewelry, if you work for a contemporary jeweler, then you need to have more exposure to vintage jewelry. If it's vice versa, maybe you're working with antique and estate jewelry and you're not as exposed to what present day Tiffany and Company and Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels are doing, then you have to self-educate and gain more exposure to that kind of jewelry. As a jewelry appraiser, anything can cross your desk. Quite often, I might receive a collection that belongs to somebody, and she may have something that she bought last week and she may have something that her great-grandmother owned and she has inherited. You need to be able to recognize and evaluate and appraise both pieces. So, you do need a very well-rounded education.   Sharon: You raised the point of Cartier and David Webb and the high-end pieces that designers make, but not everything you see is going to be that. As you said, there's the piece that the grandmother passes down. Heritage, I presume, isn't all Cartier. What do you do then? What do you do if a piece comes across your desk and it's not a Cartier or it's not a David Webb? Do you look at a David Webb as the benchmark and then go from there?   Gina: No, you don't, because a piece that has no stamp or signature doesn't necessarily mean that it's not a fine piece. That's where having an understanding of jewelry manufacturing is critical. You do need to gain an education on how a piece of jewelry is made. GIA is teaching a class called jewelry forensics. In that class, they teach appraisers and other members of the industry how to look at a piece and recognize how it was fabricated. Was it made entirely by hand? Was it made by carving a wax and casting it? Was it made via CAD/CAM design and 3D printing? Was made by using a die struck method? These are all different methods of producing a piece of jewelry, and as an appraiser you need to have an education in that so when you're holding that piece of jewelry in your hand, A) you recognize how it was made, and B) you recognize the quality of the workmanship. That plays into the value of the piece.    For example, you might have a piece of jewelry, and you recognize that it was made entirely by hand. A great deal of time and effort has gone into making it, and the workmanship is excellent. Flawless, in fact. That is going to inform you as to what it would cost to replace that piece if your client wants to insure it for another piece that has been made entirely by hand.    Or, you might look at a piece that is mass produced using CAD/CAM and 3D printing, but it's a piece that's not finished very well. It's poorly made, and the setting work is very poor, too. In fact, some of the stones are a little bit loose because they weren't set properly, or perhaps they're not straight in the piece. That's going to tell you that it's a mass-produced piece. If it's not signed, you're going to be looking at other mass-produced pieces of the same type of lower quality in order to determine what it would cost to replace that piece. Understanding production is really important.   Sharon: Can you be an appraiser without having this background of manufacturing and that sort of thing? Could you be an appraiser?   Gina: You can. I'm really sad to say that there is no licensing of jewelry appraisers. There is no regulation, no government regulation. We self-regulate. That's why if you want to become a professional appraiser and you want to be the best appraiser you can be, you should join an organization that gives you excellent education and network with other very experienced appraisers who can help guide you in the right direction to get the education that you need.    Unfortunately, anybody can appraise jewelry and nobody can stop you. As a consumer, it's best to look for an appraiser that has reached the highest level they can possibly attain within an appraisal organization that requires their members to requalify every five years. The International Society of Appraisers has a requalification program. So does the American Society of Appraisers. They do require their members to requalify every five years. Then you have the National Association of Jewelry Appraisers that have different strata of membership, different tiers of membership, so look for an appraiser within that organization that has successfully completed the Certified Master Appraiser program, the CMA, and at the very least is a certified appraiser. Someone who has sat for the exams.   Sharon: What is requalification? Is that a test on paper or a computer, or is it just that you came to class?   Gina: It varies. It depends on which organization. I failed to mention the American Gem Society, I apologize. They also have an Independent Gemologist Appraiser program. For requalification, you have to attend a minimum amount of education every year. You have to prove you have done that. There is also an exam you have to take as well.   Sharon: You answered one of the questions I had, which is what you would ask somebody you want to be an appraiser for you. What would you ask them to know if they're good or not? What should I ask? What would somebody in the public ask if they're looking for an appraiser?   Gina: Yes. Everything that I just told you. Make sure that they have reached the highest designation they can within those appraisal organizations.   Sharon: I took some antique jewelry to an appraiser not knowing that they did all kinds of jewelry, but they weren't an expert in antiques. Was there any way to suss that out in advance?   Gina: That's a great

What you'll learn in this episode: What questions to ask appraisers and auction houses before selling your jewelry. What education and networking opportunities an aspiring appraiser should seek out. Why an appraisal includes multiple values, and why those values will change depending on the reason for the appraisal. What the process of selling jewelry with an auction house is like, and why you might choose an auction house over selling online or to a store. What a qualified appraiser will look for while inspecting a piece of jewelry.   About Gina D'Onofrio With work in the retail, auction and manufacturing sectors of the jewelry industry since 1989, Gina D'Onofrio's experience encompasses jewelry design and production, appraisals, buying and selling of contemporary, antique and period jewelry, sales and management. Gina operates an independent gemological laboratory, appraisal service and consulting firm and has been catering to private individuals, banks, trusts, non-profit organizations, insurance companies, legal firms and the jewelry trade in the greater Los Angeles area. Gina received her Master Gemologist Appraiser® designation, upon completion of appraisal studies, written and practical examinations and peer appraisal report review with the American Society of Appraisers. In addition, she was awarded the Certified Master Appraiser designation with the National Association of Jewelry Appraisers. In 2013 Gina received Los Angeles Magazine's coveted "Best in LA" award for her Jewelry Appraisal Services. She conducts presentations and entertaining speeches about appraisal and jewelry related topics to private and corporate groups in Los Angeles and throughout the USA.   Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Additional Resources: Website Instagram Facebook Email   Transcript: Auctions, appraisals, and the professionals who perform them are some of the most misunderstood elements of the jewelry industry. That's exactly why Gina D'Onofrio, independent appraiser and Co-Director of Fine Jewelry at Heritage Auctions, joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast. She discussed what a consigner can expect when selling jewelry with an auction house; how appraisers come up with values (and why they might change); and how consumers can protect themselves by asking their appraiser the right questions. Read the episode transcript here.   Welcome to the Jewelry Journey, exploring the hidden world of art around you. Because every piece of art has a story, and jewelry is no exception.   Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it's released later this week.   Today, I am glad to welcome back Gina D'Onofrio, an appraiser who just returned from being an independent appraiser. She returned to the auction house Heritage as co-director of jewelry. She was also on the podcast in the very beginning, and it's good to have her on again.  I got to know Gina when she was head of the western arm of the Association of Jewelry Historians, a volunteer position. I got to know her further when she was an independent appraiser. She recently returned to Heritage Auction House as co-director of the jewelry department. Why did she return to Heritage? That's one of the things she'll be sharing with us as she tells her story. Gina will also be describing why she chose to become an appraiser and what the job entails on a day-to-day basis. She'll tell us how she deals with the dual challenges of not only bringing in jewelry to appraise, but nurturing relationships that make clients keep coming back to her with jewelry. Gina, welcome to the podcast.   Gina: Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure to be back, Sharon. Great to talk to you again.   Sharon: I'm so glad that you are on the show again. Now, my first question is if I describe to you a piece of jewelry and you've never held it or seen it or anything, but I tell you it's this many years old and it's these stones, if it has stones, can you tell me how much you think it would be worth?   Gina: Well, appraising a piece of jewelry that I can't actually see and evaluate and hold in my hand to determine the different value characteristics it might have, it would be flippant of me to give you a value. I think it would be unfair, because you may describe it to me based on your knowledge of the piece or based on what somebody has told you about the piece. If I hold it in my hand, I might see something totally different. I may have a different opinion.  For example, you may say that someone told you it was an Art Deco brooch, that it was 1920s, and it was a sapphire and diamond piece. If I had a chance to look at it, I might determine that the sapphire was laboratory grown rather than natural, because they were producing sapphires in a lab in the 1920s. You may not have that piece of information. You may have part of it, that it's a sapphire, but you may not have the rest. So, for me to arrive at a value based on your description, it's just incomplete. It wouldn't be fair.   Sharon: Could you tell if a sapphire was lab grown or if it was natural if you just looked at it without a loupe or without a microscope?   Gina: No, not without a loupe. Definitely not. Sometimes I can determine with a loupe, depending on the sapphire and the nature of the inclusions it may or may not have. But I would have to say that nine times out of 10, I need that microscope to separate the lab grown from the natural. In fact, I was doing a lot of that today. I have a collection of pieces from a dealer, and they need me to tell them if it's laboratory grown or natural. Most of the pieces they have provided to me are circa 1920 through to 1940, and about 70% of them are lab grown.   Sharon: That's interesting. One would think that they're mostly all the same. They're all lab grown or they're all natural, or most of them are one or the other.   Gina: Yes, one would think. In fact, one of the pieces had both in the one piece. It had square calibre cut sapphires in the piece, and some of them were natural and some of them were lab grown. They were selected not for the value of the sapphires. They were selected so that they were all uniform in color. At the time, I have no doubt that those lab-grown sapphires were much more expensive than they are today, just like I imagine lab-grown diamonds will be 20 years from now. Right now, they are falling rapidly in price. I imagine in the future we'll be looking at those lab-grown diamonds just like we're looking at lab-grown sapphires that were produced in the early 20th century.   Sharon: That's interesting. Like this dealer, if I have several pieces of jewelry that I want to sell or I want to auction off, should I make the rounds of auctioneers and see what the best deal is, or should I choose the one I like, the auctioneer that I jibe with the most?   Gina: That's an interesting question. There's a lot of depends there. It depends on the piece that you have. Some auction houses will only take a certain price point and above in order for them to bring your piece to a successful sale. So, already, your piece may or may not be suitable for some auction houses.    The second part of your question, I think, is very important because the market is going to do what it's going to do. If the auction house is one of the more reputable, top-tier auction houses—Heritage Auctions is definitely one of them. If they are going to be putting the proper marketing behind your piece, professional photography, if they have an international bidding audience, then after that, it's going to be important to know that you have a comfortable relationship with the representative of that auction house and that they are going to be your advocate, because it's not just the estimate. In fact, the estimate is probably the very least important thing about your piece if you were going to be selling it at auction.  What's more important is what are they going to do for you? Are they going to represent your piece properly? Do they have the right audience for your piece? How many photographs of the piece are going to be taken? Is it going to be up for a public preview? Is it a traveling preview that your piece is going to be placed in? There are many aspects to this that need to be discussed with you as the consignor. Then also, what fees are you going to be charged? There's a lot of ifs. I wish I could give you a more direct answer, but if you were going to me, for example, at Heritage Auctions, I'm going to be exploring all those options with you so that you can make an informed decision.   Sharon: On the Antiques Roadshow, they say very often, "In a well-marketed auction, this would be X-Y-Z price." To me, a well-marketed auction is one that has to advertise. I'd see ads. That's it. What would you consider a well-marketed auction piece or auction?   Gina: Well, Sharon, coming from you, I think that's an excellent question since you are a marketing extraordinaire. These days, marketing is very different, isn't it? We're looking at more the digital aspect of marketing, because so many of us are online now, just like you and I are right now. Being online for marketing is what type of social media presence do you have? What type of email marketing do you have? Also, what is your bidding audience for marketing? How are you able to reach them? Through email, or are you just relying on more conventional forms of auction marketing, be it print advertising or be it public previews? I think in this present market, it's good to have a balance of both. But I am finding that digital marketing is becoming more and more critical.   Sharon: I would believe that. I'm curious, what are the fees involved? Is it the buyer who pays the fees or the auction house that pays the fees to the buyer? I never understood that.   Gina: Again, it depends. As far as the consignor goes, if you have the Hope Diamond

What you'll learn in this episode: How Saudia is preserving her mom Cara Croninger's legacy Why Cara Croninger's resin and plastic jewelry was—and still is—groundbreaking How Cara Croninger refined her jewelry making process, and why she didn't want her pieces to be perfect What it was like to grow up in an artistic family in the heyday of New York's art jewelry scene How Saudia's mom and dad influenced her music career today   About Saudia Young Saudia Young is a New York City-born actress/singer and storyteller in theater and film. Born on the Lower East Side and brought up between Tribeca and LA, Young explores the notion of home, love, justice, and identity through her art.   The recently repatriated artist lived in Berlin, Germany, for a long chapter of performing, writing, and producing. The Ameripolitan Awards 2023 Female Rockabilly Singer nominee released her 7" single 'Noir Rockabilly Blues,' produced by Lars Vegas-DE and featuring 'The Wobble' on the A and Iggy Pop's 'Lust for Life' on the B side, in 2017, followed up by her 12" debut 'Unlovable' in 2018. The LP was recorded live at Berlin, Germany's legendary Lightning Recorders.   Young founded a Dark Kabarett and a Rockabilly Noir Blues band in Berlin, co-created the Lost Cabaret and the Schwarze Liste Kabarett theater projects and wrote and produced the award-winning short film The Gallery. While in Berlin, she was cast in the lead voice-over role of Oskar in School for Vampires (the English version of the Hahn Film cartoon series).   Young co-wrote and performed the solo show Sneaker Revolution and is currently writing a theater/film piece about her actor father, Otis Young, and sculptor/designer mom Cara Croninger. Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Additional Resources: Saudia's Website Saudia's Instagram Saudia's Youtube   Transcript:   To jewelry lovers, Cara Croninger was a groundbreaking artist whose work was shown at iconic galleries Artwear and Sculpture to Wear. To musician and actress Saudia Young, she was just mom. Today, Saudia is working to preserve her mother's legacy and secure her place in art jewelry history. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how Cara made her pioneering resin jewelry; how Cara's work evolved with the times; and why Saudia thinks of her mom every time she performs. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven't heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com.   Today, we're speaking to my guest, Saudia Young, who is located in Philadelphia. She has an interesting background. Her mother was a very well-known jeweler, and her father was an actor. She was born in New York and grew up between New York and Los Angeles. Welcome back.   Were you aware she was doing this? Were you aware that she went to different galleries, that she didn't have a sales rep when you were growing up? Were you aware of this?   Saudia: Yeah, of course. There was one point in the 90s where she had a showroom. Tony Goldman and Janet Goldman had a showroom called Fragments, and she was in the showroom for some years. She had different reps throughout her life. Ten Thousand Things was a store. They still exist, and they have incredibly beautiful work. For a while in the Meatpacking District, they had a nice cadre of artists, and my mom was one of the artists. They also did wholesale for her. So, they represented her work to other people.   Sharon: I have a few pieces, just a smattering, but do you have a lot of her work? Do you have an archive of her work?   Saudia: Oh, yeah. That's part of what I've been dealing with. My sister and I have our own personal collections. Throughout the years, my mom collected the best pieces of each group and gave us our personal collections. Then I have basically all the work she left behind when she passed away. I've been trying to organize that. There was a big section of it shown at the Aspen Art Museum two years ago for about a year. Jonathan Burger had a show called The Store. My mom's jewelry and sculptures were in one show. That was really exciting, to have both together. Actually, 14 small sculptures sold during that show and, fingers crossed, about seven pieces will be donated to an institution. I'm not going to say which one. That takes a long time.   Right now, there are pieces that are actively being sold. Lisa Berman—not a family member, just the same last name—from Sculpture to Wear sold some of my mom's work at her first gallery. She also helped sell some pieces when I came out and was trying to figure out what to do and how to secure the legacy, meaning literally a storage space to hold everything. It's a big responsibility.   Sharon: You're referring to Lisa Berman.   Saudia: Yeah, who is not your blood relation but of the same name. Obviously, she introduced us and was part of the first interview. She's consulted with me. She's another one of the angels. There's a whole host of people who are still in awe of my mom's work and in support and cheerleading. It includes Robert Lee Morris.   I'm still trying to figure out what to do with the work to secure the legacy. It is being sold at Studio Hop in Providence, Rhode Island. That's introducing the work to some people who have not seen it before. It's introducing it to a new audience, which is really nice. Jussara Lee, who used to sell it in Manhattan and is now in Connecticut, has been selling it. Other than that, I have an Artwork Archive website for her so people can see the work. I'm not selling it from that website, but there is a section of it that's still being sold. Then there's a section I'm holding in case I can get it accepted into an institution.   Sharon: I remember a few years ago, I fell in love with a bracelet and I didn't end up getting it. I think it was the first time I ever heard of her, and I thought it was so neat.   Saudia: Yeah, it sold a lot of work. They stopped selling after she passed away. They also had a hard time. Everybody is just recovering now from Covid. A lot of people had a very hard time in the past few years. Some stores closed and sales went down. There were several stores who were carrying her work who have closed since Covid.   Sharon: What did you do to make it through Covid and to have money come in?   Saudia: I cried. I don't know. I did whatever I could. I was going back and forth between Germany and here. There was a grant in Germany—actually, it wasn't a grant; it was a loan—but there was a Covid loan they were giving to artists in Germany. Here, I went on unemployment for a while and then I went off it, whatever I could. We all did what we could to survive.   Sharon: That's very true. I know there were different things we had to do. I agree with you that people are just coming out of it now.   Saudia: And now we have two wars, so it's like, "Great, thank you." Can't catch a break.   Sharon: Which is worse? I don't know. I guess if you're in the field over there, it's worse.   Saudia: Yeah.   Sharon: A lot worse. How does it feel to have a mother who's mentioned by people you don't know? You say you're the daughter and all of a sudden, they say, "Oh, I love your mom," or "I love her jewelry."   Saudia: What do you mean? How does it feel?   Sharon: Yeah. If I said, "Oh, I have a really neat bracelet," and the person says, "I've not heard of that person," how does it feel?   Saudia: First of all, a young man—he's probably my age. It's so funny I still think of myself as a teenager. Timothy Reukauf is a stylist. He's another angel who introduced me to the manager and owner of Screaming Mimis Vintage clothing and jewelry store in New York. When I brought the work, because they brought the work to a vintage show, and they're showing the work and trying to sell it, she was so enthusiastic and happy and excited. It was nice because it's an extension of my mom, and I miss my mom. I feel like it's that, as opposed to anything ego-based. It's more emotional—now you're going to get me emotional. But it's nice to know because I really miss her, and when I hear people loving her work, it's heartening. It's heart filling.   Sharon: That's a good word, heart-filling. I've heard different things. It's Croninger with a hard g. I've heard that as Croninger with a soft g. Which one is it?   Saudia: Oh lord, that's a good one. It's Cara Croninger with a hard g, but people have called her Croninger with a soft g. People have called her Cara. She's even called herself Cara, but it's Cara Lee. Her Michigan name was Cara Lee Croninger, but it depends on who you are. Are you Dutch? Are you German? Are you from New Jersey?   Sharon: Did she support your career as an artist?   Saudia: Do you mean my dreaming? Yeah, she supported me being a dreaming, silly person, definitely. She put me in dance school. She always thought I should be a painter, actually. She'd say, "You should be a painter," because I had a natural ability to draw and to work with my hands. After being a child laborer with her, I could make things. But all jokes aside, she was very supportive of me being an artist or whatever it was that I wanted to be, political activist or artist. My sister was an architect. She was very supportive of that. She was beloved by a lot of the young artists who were around Dumbo, our friends, our extended family. She was a positive influence, a positive auntie, elder, second mom, to a lot of people.   Sharon: It sounds like it.   Saudia: Yeah. I shared her as a mom figure with a lot of people.   Sharon: Tell us more about your singing. Do you think of her when you sing?   Saudia: Yeah, I think of her with whatever I do, for sure. There's one song—I think you wrote it down on the question list—It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got that Swing), doo wop, doo wop, doo wop, doo wop. I think it was Louis Armstrong. She was working on some kind of saying or branding because she was really i

What you'll learn in this episode: How Saudia is preserving her mom Cara Croninger's legacy Why Cara Croninger's resin and plastic jewelry was—and still is—groundbreaking How Cara Croninger refined her jewelry making process, and why she didn't want her pieces to be perfect What it was like to grow up in an artistic family in the heyday of New York's art jewelry scene How Saudia's mom and dad influenced her music career today   About Saudia Young Saudia Young is a New York City-born actress/singer and storyteller in theater and film. Born on the Lower East Side and brought up between Tribeca and LA, Young explores the notion of home, love, justice, and identity through her art.   The recently repatriated artist lived in Berlin, Germany, for a long chapter of performing, writing, and producing. The Ameripolitan Awards 2023 Female Rockabilly Singer nominee released her 7" single 'Noir Rockabilly Blues,' produced by Lars Vegas-DE and featuring 'The Wobble' on the A and Iggy Pop's 'Lust for Life' on the B side, in 2017, followed up by her 12" debut 'Unlovable' in 2018. The LP was recorded live at Berlin, Germany's legendary Lightning Recorders.   Young founded a Dark Kabarett and a Rockabilly Noir Blues band in Berlin, co-created the Lost Cabaret and the Schwarze Liste Kabarett theater projects and wrote and produced the award-winning short film The Gallery. While in Berlin, she was cast in the lead voice-over role of Oskar in School for Vampires (the English version of the Hahn Film cartoon series).   Young co-wrote and performed the solo show Sneaker Revolution and is currently writing a theater/film piece about her actor father, Otis Young, and sculptor/designer mom Cara Croninger. Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Additional Resources: Saudia's Website Saudia's Instagram Saudia's Youtube   Transcript:   To jewelry lovers, Cara Croninger was a groundbreaking artist whose work was shown at iconic galleries Artwear and Sculpture to Wear. To musician and actress Saudia Young, she was just mom. Today, Saudia is working to preserve her mother's legacy and secure her place in art jewelry history. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how Cara made her pioneering resin jewelry; how Cara's work evolved with the times; and why Saudia thinks of her mom every time she performs. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it's released later this week.   Today, we're speaking to my guest, Saudia Young, who is located in Philadelphia. She has an interesting background. Her mother was a very well-known jeweler, and her father was an actor. She was born in New York and grew up between New York and Los Angeles. She is New York material. You will be surprised to hear that she developed a career as an actress, a writer and a singer. She's described as having a whisky voice, and I think that's true, a caramel whisky voice. She was a nominee in 2023.   Saudia: Thank you so much for having me. I'm really glad to come on to your show for the second time. It was the Ameripolitan Music Awards. I was simply nominated for female rockabilly singer. There are lots of different categories and full bands. Jane Rose won for the rockabilly female singer that year. They're moving on, but it was very exciting to come after 15 years in Germany to participate in that. I've met a lot of awesome people because of that.   Sharon: I know you've lived in several places, but I didn't know for 15 years, you say, in Berlin?   Saudia: Yes.   Sharon: Wow! Now you're in Philadelphia this evening.   Saudia: Yes.   Sharon: Is that your home?   Saudia: It is for now. It's where my sister lives. I have a sister from my mother and my father. He had other children, so that's why I clarify that. I'm spending some time with my sister. I've been back and forth in the States since my mom passed in 2019. I'm honestly trying to figure out where I'm going to live. It's not clear because of Covid and my mom passing, but it's been a lot.   Sharon: 15 years being in one place.   Saudia: Yeah, so I'm here for now. I feel like I can't commit to saying this is my home. It's like, "Let's see what it brings. Let's see what happens." It's great to hang out with my sister. I'm close to my mom's work, which is stored now in Hackensack, New Jersey. I moved it from New York. My mom's work has had more of a tour than I have.   Sharon: Cara Croninger is your mom's name. Even though she passed—I'm very sorry to hear that—she's still very well-known. She has an exhibit in the Smithsonian?   Saudia: No, it's simply her papers, photographs, articles, fashion editorials. As you know, she bridged fashion and art. She was in both worlds. She had a toe or a foot or whatever in both worlds, so she has been accepted into the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian. That means they have letters, her correspondence to other artists and gallerists and whomever, any type of reviews, sketches, all her boxes of papers and some photographs. It's an honor. It was sad to let that go, but it's also awesome because that means it's helping to secure her legacy.   It will eventually be uploaded digitally so people will be able to look at it. You can go into the archives and look up different artists and see their papers. For example, one of my favorite things were letters from Floriana Frassetto, who founded Mummenschanz and was one of her best friends. She always wrote these beautiful letters to her. She would call her Cara Mia. She was Swiss-Italian. So, it's just that, showing the ephemeral items in her life.   Sharon: You've been on this program before. You were among our first guests—   Saudia: Yeah.   Sharon: If you want to listen to it, it's on TheJewelryJourney.com. We're so glad to have you back again.   Saudia: Thank you.   Sharon: Tell me why your mom's jewelry was different. What was the breakthrough? Why are they keeping her papers?   Saudia: I think because of that bridge. She wasn't craft. She came as a sculptor. Her jewelry was made of acrylic and polyester resin, although she did work in other materials like metals. She started off painting, but the work was always very sculptural and almost avant garde. It went from very organic and indigenous and African influenced to futuristic. It was solidly in the art world, but also solidly in the fashion world when she was with Robert Lee Morris' gallery, Artwear, and before that, Sculpture to Wear.   Artwear blew up and it was very, very popular in the press and in fashion magazines. All the top models were wearing it. People like Iman would come to the gallery openings. It was part of that whole exciting time in the 80s in New York, seeping a little bit into the 90s, but mostly in the 80s. It was in the late 70s and throughout the 80s that they had their heyday. There were other artists in this gallery that are now working and very well-known, like Ted Muehling, Robert Lee Morris himself. Carol Motty, may she rest in peace, was a very, very good friend of my mom. She worked in silicone.   Sharon: I'm sorry. I don't know her.   Saudia: Carol Motty. She did wild, neon-colored, awesome pieces in silicone rubber. She was unique in that it literally was a bridge of art and fashion. That's what she built. I think that was her significance. In terms of the materials, the pieces cost anywhere from $40 to $4,000 or more. She raised the level of this material, which is plastic resin and acrylic, polyester resin, to a very high level. It would get the same price that silver and gold and gemstone jewels would get because of the beauty, the workmanship, that she put into it. The work is known for having this sensual beauty. A lot of the pieces have a wonderful weight. They have a talisman magic to them. People often will collect the pieces. You even collected some pieces.   Sharon: Yeah, I did. I love them.   Saudia: It's kind of magic. She herself as a person was a beautiful, down-to-earth, but funny and effervescent person. People loved meeting her. They loved collecting the work.   Sharon: What was the role you and your sister played?   Saudia: We were her daughters. We did help make work. There were points where we learned how to do the finishing work. We never did the pouring, creating the pigments or the molds, but we could help with finishing. We'd be her child laborers and work on the sanding machine or polishing or drilling holes or what have you. We were able to do finishing work. Because we grew up with it, we understood the shapes and her style, but even growing up with it, there was always some kind of tension. She would say, "That's your style. That's not mine." It wasn't easy because it was so organic and very unique. That made it hard for her to have people work for her.   Sharon: When you would attend these parties or an opening night at the galleries, did you know who the celebrities of the day were? Were you aware?   Saudia: Yeah, I was in my early 20s or so. At one point, my sister and I both worked at Artwear. We were both looking forward to working with Robert. That was always really fun. Even the artists were celebrities to us because they were so talented and vivacious and positive. I knew a lot of the models, the supermodels, Pat Cleveland and whomever, but since my dad was an actor, I grew up already having certain people in my life. I was trained for that to be not that big of a deal because I just grew up in that.   When my parents met, they were in the Village in the 60s. James Baldwin was a good friend of my dad, and he was allegedly my godfather. It was a smaller world in a way. Definitely, the 60s and even the 80s feel like a more innocent time than now for some reason. I met different celebrities just on my own, and you felt like they were New Yorkers. I knew Jean-Michel Basquiat and I was like, "He's just a kid." I had no clue.  

Link to article:  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/20/fashion/jewelry-podcasts.html Welcome to the Jewelry Journey, exploring the hidden world of art around you. Because every piece of art has a story, and jewelry is no exception. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey podcast. We are thrilled to announce an article on the Jewelry Journey podcast from writer Melanie Abrams released in the New York Times. The article is linked in the show notes, our website, and even Instagram. So please help us take the jewelry journey even farther by sharing, liking and commenting on the article. Hopefully in the coming months I will have some of the other hosts from the article so that we can learn more about their adoration of adornments. Thank you again for listening.Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.

What you'll learn in this episode: Why artist jewelry is more than just miniature versions of larger work The history of artist jewelry, and how Esther is helping its story continue How Esther helps artists with their first forays into jewelry, and why making jewelry can be a fruitful challenge for fine artists Why an artist's first idea for a piece of jewelry is often not their best Why artist jewelry collectors must be brave About Esther de Beaucé Esther de Beaucé is the founder and owner of Galerie MiniMasterpiece in Paris, France. MiniMasterpiece is a gallery entirely dedicated to contemporary artists, designers and architects' jewelry. The gallery is an invitation given to those who usually never design jewelry because their work evolves on a more monumental scale (i.e. sculptures). Esther's passion is to convince those artists to change the scale of their work and accompany them in that new field of wearable art. She has collaborated with acclaimed contemporary artists such as Phillip King, Bernar Venet, Andres Serrano, Lee Ufan, Jean-Luc Moulène, and Pablo Reinoso. A graduate of Brown University, Esther previously co-owned the gallery Schirman & de Beaucé in Paris, dedicated to young artists of contemporary art. Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Additional Resources: Website Instagram Transcript: For gallerist Esther de Beaucé, artist jewelry isn't completely art or completely contemporary jewelry. It's in a niche all its own—and that's what makes it fascinating. As founder and owner of Galerie MiniMasterpiece in Paris, she helps fine artists translate their art into jewelry, creating something entirely new rather than a smaller version of their typical work. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how she challenges artists to think about their work differently; how interest in artist jewelry has evolved over the years; and why artist jewelry collectors are so open minded. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Welcome to the Jewelry Journey, exploring the hidden world of art around you. Because every piece of art has a story, and jewelry is no exception. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven't heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com. I don't remember how I found out about Esther de Beaucé's gallery in Paris. It is tucked back in the corner with other galleries. Welcome back. Do you have collectors, people who like a certain artist or piece they've found in your gallery, and then they come back and look for others, or you send them a postcard telling them, "We're having a show of that artist," or something like that? Esther: Yes. I have shows at the gallery as well, maybe for a year. Most of the time they are solo shows. I like solo shows a lot because it's like for art, when when you have a solo show, you're surrounded by several pieces of work. You are emerging into their body of work. It's more interesting to me than having one piece by that artist and another piece by another artist. I like solo shows a lot, but solo shows are not easy to make because it means that obviously the artist had several ideas. It takes a lot of time to organize a solo show, but I try to make solo shows most of the time. I invite all my collectors to these shows. It's always difficult to know what's going to happen between a collector and a piece of jewelry, what connection is going to operate at that time. Sometimes collectors choose or fall for an object, and they don't know the artist who's behind it, but they really fall for an object. I really like that idea. Sometimes collectors are very close to an artist, and they have several pieces of that artist in their homes. When they realize that artist has also made a piece of jewelry, then of course they're going to be interested in it. Most of the jewels I have at the gallery, I hope they speak for themselves. You were asking me about collectors and jewelry. Sharon: You answered the question. But do have people who only collect, let's say, Pablo Picasso's jewelry or something that? Esther: Yeah, of course. Some women only wear silver or only wear gold or only wear rings or never wear any brooches. I try to remember all that so I can show them what they like. But I also enjoy presenting them with other things, too, because it's always interesting to make discoveries. And the collectors of artist jewelry are very open-minded people. It takes a lot of, I wouldn't say courage, but it takes a lot of personality to wear something that is different from common jewelry. You have to be strong because you're going to attract looks, and sometimes you have to speak about what you're wearing and answer people's reactions. Sometimes other people can be very narrow-minded, and you have to assume what you chose and what you wear on your body. So, this type of collector, they're very interesting to welcome. What I mean is that even though they have their taste, they are easy to counsel as well because they have that curiosity. They want to learn, and they want to see so much. So, they are very interesting people. Sharon: Do they go on to start liking the artist's other things, their paintings or drawings, after they started with the jewelry? Esther: Yes, of course. I have a lot of jewels at the gallery, but I also have a lot of books, and those books help me explain the artist's work at large. Often, when I can, I try to offer a book to accompany the jewel to give them more background on the artist. Yeah, definitely. Sharon: Do you make jewelry yourself? Did you ever make jewelry yourself? Esther: No. Never. Maybe as a kid playing with leaves and flowers, but that's it. Or pasta. Sharon: What did you study? When you were in the States, did you think about opening a gallery in France? Esther: No, I studied anthropology. I really wanted to work as an anthropologist, but it didn't happen. After that first art experience that ended in 2012, I wanted a new project working with artists. I had seen the year before, in 2011, a great artist jewelry show at the MAD in New York. That was actually my mother's collection of artist jewelry. I went to New York for her opening, and it was the first time that I saw her collection in the museum environment, and I was so impressed. I started thinking of a new project for myself, and this show in New York was really—how would you say— Sharon: Eye opening. Esther: That's it. Eye opening and a decision-making moment. And as I came back to Paris, I started really talking about it and organizing my professional life to make it possible. Sharon: That's interesting. When you said your mother was a collector, I thought, "Well, she must have started early, before anybody was wearing it or knew about it." Today, more and more people know about it, but then she probably didn't have a lot of friends who were collecting the same thing. Esther: Yeah, for sure. That show was 12 years ago, but she started collecting artist jewelry 40 years ago. There are few women in the world who have done the same thing. There are few. It's a large and important collection. She focused on that in a professional way. Sharon: When you said that you thought it was a more active field in the 60s and 70s and then it sort of died down, why do you think that was? Esther: It's a matter of different elements. I think it was in 1969, there was a great show at the MOMA in New York on artist jewelry that's never happened since. You also had great artists, jewelry editors at that time in Italy. You had GianCarlo Montebello, who was a goldsmith and an editor, and he worked with fantastic artists like Fontana and the Pomodoro brothers. Montebello made fantastic pieces. In the south of France, you had François Hugo, who was a very important goldsmith as well. He's the one who made all the jewelry by Max Ernst and Man Ray and Picasso and Dorothea Tanning. Sometimes it's just a matter of a few people. They really made the artist jewelry world very active at the time, but then they stopped and did something else, so it went quiet again. Hopefully, it's getting more intense now, but you need people behind it. Once these people do something else, then it dies a little bit. And then you have a new generation of editors and it starts again. Sharon: By editor you also mean curator, right? It's a curator. Esther: Also, yeah. By editor I mean what I do personally, but what also has been done by Luisa Guinness or Elisabetta Cipriani or Marina Filippini, those active editors, meaning you invite artists to make jewelry pieces. This is what I called editor. This is what I do. Sharon: Do you only wear art jewelry that you have in your gallery or that an artist has made, or do you wear "normal" jewelry? Esther: It might sound weird to you, but I'm a low-key person. I'm a discreet person. When I'm at the gallery every day, I choose a piece of work and I wear it all day in the gallery with an immense pleasure. But when I go out, when I go to a dinner party or visit a show, I don't wear jewelry. It might sound funny, but I wouldn't want people to think I am always promoting what I do and my work. Imagine a regular art dealer. He wouldn't go to an art fair or to a to a dinner party carrying with him a painting or a sculpture. When I go out wearing a jewel from the gallery, I feel like I'm still working, and I don't like that idea. I don't want people to imagine that I'm always trying to sell jewelry. So, in dinner parties, I'm very often the only woman not wearing any piece of jewelry, which is very stupid. But yeah, this is me. Sharon: That's interesting. Has anybody ever stopped you on the street and said, "That's a really interesting necklace you have on"? Esther: Yeah, but not very often because when you see me on the street, I don't have it on me. Of course, on special occasions I do, but I mostly wear artist jewelry in the gallery, and it's a great pleasure to do so. I change every day and wear se

What you'll learn in this episode: Why artist jewelry is more than just miniature versions of larger work The history of artist jewelry, and how Esther is helping its story continue How Esther helps artists with their first forays into jewelry, and why making jewelry can be a fruitful challenge for fine artists Why an artist's first idea for a piece of jewelry is often not their best Why artist jewelry collectors must be brave About Esther de Beaucé Esther de Beaucé is the founder and owner of Galerie MiniMasterpiece in Paris, France. MiniMasterpiece is a gallery entirely dedicated to contemporary artists, designers and architects' jewelry. The gallery is an invitation given to those who usually never design jewelry because their work evolves on a more monumental scale (i.e. sculptures). Esther's passion is to convince those artists to change the scale of their work and accompany them in that new field of wearable art. She has collaborated with acclaimed contemporary artists such as Phillip King, Bernar Venet, Andres Serrano, Lee Ufan, Jean-Luc Moulène, and Pablo Reinoso. A graduate of Brown University, Esther previously co-owned the gallery Schirman & de Beaucé in Paris, dedicated to young artists of contemporary art. Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Additional Resources: Website Instagram Transcript: For gallerist Esther de Beaucé, artist jewelry isn't completely art or completely contemporary jewelry. It's in a niche all its own—and that's what makes it fascinating. As founder and owner of Galerie MiniMasterpiece in Paris, she helps fine artists translate their art into jewelry, creating something entirely new rather than a smaller version of their typical work. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how she challenges artists to think about their work differently; how interest in artist jewelry has evolved over the years; and why artist jewelry collectors are so open minded. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Welcome to the Jewelry Journey, exploring the hidden world of art around you. Because every piece of art has a story, and jewelry is no exception. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it's released later this week. I don't remember how I found out about Esther de Beaucé's gallery in Paris. It is tucked back in the corner with other galleries. I don't know, unless you are looking for it, if you would find it easily. It was an intentional destination for me both times I've been there. It is very hard to find. I was determined that I was going to find it, and after a little bit of time I did find it. It is a very cozy and comfortable gallery, and Esther herself is easy to talk to. The gallery specializes in jewelry designed by artists. Some are French, some are Italian, and I'm sure there are others. The prices are very reasonable compared with other shops with jewelry by artists where you find a pretentious atmosphere. Esther speaks English flawlessly, having attended Brown College, and she has been on the podcast before, many moons ago. I'll let her tell you the rest of the story. Esther, welcome to the program. Esther: Hello, Sharon. Thank you for having me today. Sharon: I'm so glad to have you. So, why did you choose to sell jewelry by artists? Esther: I wanted to work with artists, contemporary artists, because before MiniMasterpiece, I had a first gallery also in Paris, working with young artists on paintings and sculptures and drawings. That gallery had to end, and my obsession was continuing working with artists because I really enjoyed that, that work, but I had to find another way. There are many art galleries in Paris, and I wanted to find a more special way to work with them. I knew of artist jewelry, and there aren't many places in the world and in Paris, either, for artist jewelry. So, this is how I started. Sorry, I think I said enough. Sharon: No, please, go ahead. Esther: So, at first, it was more for the pleasure of working with artists than that of making jewelry. After 12 years, I became very fond of jewelry, of course. I wouldn't say exactly the same thing, but back in time, 12 years ago, it was really my love for artists. Sharon: It was your love for artists. How was it changing from the drawings and the paintings and all of that to jewelry? Was it natural? Was it different? Esther: Yeah, it's a challenge for them, of course, when I invite them to think of their work at a different scale. They have to think of the body, which most of the time they never do because when you make a sculpture or a painting or a photograph, obviously it's not to be worn. But this time it was a big challenge for them and also for me, because 12 years ago I knew little about jewelry making itself. We both had to learn. It was a challenge for them, and it was also a challenge for me. But I knew that it was possible because it's a story that goes back in time for about a century now, with Picasso and Calder and Giacometti, all those great visual artists who made a few wearable art pieces on the side of their main activity. Sharon: Was it scary for you to start asking artists if they would do their jewelry, if they would make jewelry? Esther: I started asking those artists I knew personally because they were family friends, or I had worked with them in the past with that former gallery I had. So, I didn't take many risks the first year. Then I got more brave and I started to ask other artists. I only ask those artists where I like the work. I am a big fan of their monumental work. They are mostly sculptors. It's because I like their sculpture, but I think of inviting them to make a sculpture to wear. Sharon: Do they look at you funny, like, "What are you talking about?" Or, "I don't understand what you mean"? Esther: Most of them understand the idea. I've had several artists say no, but not that many. Sometimes they even thought about making a jewelry piece but never had the occasion to do so because they need to be surrounded by the good people. Very often they need to be accompanied by a goldsmith because they haven't mastered the work of gold or silver, so they need help on that matter. But once you invite them and tell them about that great story and how many artists have worked on that subject in the past, and that you can take them to the right goldsmiths that can help them understand their project, then it's much easier for them to accept. Sharon: And have they ever rejected you and just said, "Forget it. That's weird"? Esther: Yeah, of course they have. Sometimes it's because they don't get a good idea. Finding the right idea is not that easy. Sometimes they don't have time. Sometimes it's not a good time for them to spend some energy on that project. And of course, I understand that perfectly. In very, very, very few cases, sometimes they don't take jewelry very seriously. They have that image of jewelry being something not serious. But there are many artists I can invite, and those who don't want to play with me, it's no big deal. Sharon: Do you leave it to them to decide if it's a bracelet or a ring or a necklace or what they're going to make? Esther: Yes, of course. I open possibilities for them as wide as they want at the beginning. Then once they have ideas, we talk. Once it gets more precise, if they are going to make only one piece of jewelry, sometimes I advise them to think of a ring or a necklace because they are the most iconic type of jewels. If they have several ideas, then why not add a bracelet or earrings? But if they have to make only one, I usually recommend them to make a necklace. Also, because a necklace leaves more volume and space for them to express themselves. Sometimes it's very difficult for them to condense their work into a very tiny piece. A necklace is bigger. Sharon: What do you say to them if they say, "Esther, I'm a sculptor. I don't know how to make this small"? What do you say? Esther: I say that what I'm interested in is the DNA of their work. An idea has no size. Basically, it would be the same as making a very large sculpture. But when they are invited by a museum or a gallery, they are given a space to make. Sometimes they make a sculpture especially for that space, a museum or a gallery. I just tell them, "Well, this time you have to make a piece of a sculpture for the body." It is just another way of thinking, and artists like to be challenged. It's a very big challenge for them, but they are very often excited by that challenge. Sharon: Are they doing other things? Are they making the jewelry for your gallery, and they're working on a sculpture or painting at the same time? It might be a different subject, but I'm wondering. Esther: Yes. I think they're on different topics at the same time. Also, when they have to think of making a wearable sculpture, sometimes it helps them to think of a new idea for a monumental work. This is something they have said to me on various occasions, that going from big to small and then back to big is also interesting for them. Sometimes it has an impact on how they think big afterwards. Sharon: You're located in the antique district in Paris, right? Esther: Yes. Not only antiques. It's called the Carré Rive Gauche. It's a very special geography because it's like a square with about six streets. It's very unique in the world because in that square you have about 120 galleries and antique shops of different specialties. You have contemporary art, you have antiques, you have Chinese art, African art, glass works, silver works. It's very unique to have such a strong—how would you say that—density of art shops. It's not like—you know the Marais? The Marais is another district that is very focused on contemporary design and contemporary art. Carré Rive Gauche and Saint-Germain-des-Prés reunites a wider range of art galleries, and I really like that mix. I feel very