Insta Love // Re Elle

What influences, inspires, sets your heart on fire?  Curiosity about what does that for other people opens up new ways to get inspired and lit up.  I love to watch what my jeweler peers are doing, what they are being moved by and how that eventually turns up in their work.

My Insta Love feature will now be all about this: my favorite outtakes from the jewelers and artists we house in the shop.This art form and craft, at its best, goes beyond making pretty little things.  It is tapping into the same human and universal mysteries that all art gets itself into.

Today I am sharing some of my favorite shots from Brooklyn designer Re Elle.  I own one of her Fold Cuffs, it is a daily wear that feels a part of my body.  Her feed is one of my most heart-throbby.

Follow her @re_elle
Enjoy.

one

two

three

four

five

six

seven

S P R E A D T H E L O V E

SF CHRONICLE // Heavy Metal Jewelry Makers

I was featured in a really beautiful feature this Sunday in the SF Chronicle's Style Section Jewelry Issue.  I loved the article that Maghan McDowell wrote focusing on women finding their niche working with heavy metals, tools, and ancient techniques.  She really captured what I love about my job, the feeling of wielding tools, torches, and hammers to create pretty things that mean something to both me and my clients.

It was a total honor to be featured alongside some other Bay heavy-hitters like Salty Fox, Marissa Haskell, The 2 Bandits, and Kendra Renee Lawrence.  Check out their work, Marissa has her own beautiful shop in the Temescal Alley that is totally worth seeing with your own eyes.  We really are so lucky to live in a community that is so supportive of jewelry artists-- and being a member of the industry has been such a pleasure. 

"Kate Ellen Metals has a rough, hard-to-place timelessness that seems not of this world - or of this century. And that's just the way she likes it. Using what she calls a "looser" aesthetic with recycled silver, gold and diamonds, the 32-year-old native of West Marin's Forest Knolls has been making jewelry since 2009. Before then, she had been a social worker and a teacher with a creative instinct but no natural talent, she says, until she found metalwork. Her dad worked in construction, and she was drawn to the contrast of using rough tools to make something beautiful and "girly." Many of her pieces (generally $85 to $450) are cast in sand to achieve an intentionally gritty texture. One of her favorite first works inspired her popular Little Rock ring; the original was created out of melted jewelry that had belonged to her grandmother, and namesake, Ellen." READ ON >>>

S P R E A D T H E L O V E