A Great Note From A Customer

"I wanted to share this picture I took last week while on a vacation in Topsail Island, NC. I purchased this ring during my visit to San Francisco in November of last year. My last two trips there found me at your store choosing a ring. I think it's become a tradition for me. :) I chose the quote both because it certainly fits my feelings about my SF trips, but also because I want to remember that every day is a gift and simply being HERE, anywhere, is a gift.
As I stood staring out to sea, I remembered my ring and thought that a picture with the quote visible would be a neat thing to do.
I thought you all might like to know that to me your jewelry is more than just a beautiful thing to wear on the outside, it's a representation of what's going on inside as well.
Peace and joy to you all!"
Susan

Inspiration

I came across this website just now and wanted to share the happy feeling it gave me. http://www.reytan.de/portfolio/desktop

Hi Miyako!

Miyako is giving my head a hammerin' which is blond since she saw it last

Miyako Kurooka is our chic and well travelled agent in Japan. She landed last night and was at our offices bright and early as always--she has more energy than anyone I know. We took her over to the Rotunda in Neiman's where we lunched and cought up over the famous pop overs that were larger than our heads. Here is what I learned: Miyako isn't fond of camping and Kazu, our wholesale specialist, spent her early years living in a hotel--exactly like Eloise! oh, and we did talk a little about business...

Miyako is responsible for introducing Camper and Henri Beguelin to Japan. Currently she has five Henri Beguelin stores and we are happy to have a small selection featured in three of them. My dream is to someday have a teeny tiny store in Japan and Miyako is the one who I would trust to do that well. I have to be really, really patient because that does not happen overnight. We sell to about 25 stores there including Barneys Japan so relatively few people are aware of my line there...someday...

here is an example of a shop in shop in Japan.

The Zoo and Decorating with Workbenches

Its is Friday and I have already covered serious ground at the zoo this morning. We saw the baby gorilla and the feeding of the grizzlies... but most importantly, William found an awesome puddle to stomp in right in front of the tigers.

I have been tortured about working all the time in my studio and being away from Will so I made an executive decision to put one of our extra workbenches right in the middle of my dining room--not exactly in the middle but in front of the windows. Phew.

A long time ago, I lived in a warehouse and I felt a pressure to work all the time since there was no boundary between 'work' and 'live' in the space. It wore me out, I ended up having a little health break down and I swore to always keep things separate no matter what. Now that I have a family I find myself having to do whatever it takes to structure my work differently, in a totally new way, and it is turning out to be really more difficult and painful being away from him--more than I thought it would be. The challenge is that what I do requires a lot of concentration and very specific tools so it isn't something I can just do on a computer from anywhere. I have to admit that I am having a real love/hate moment with my work.

Flow

I was happily in a state of flow while working on a tiny wax moss!

I am reading a book called Happiness by a Buddhist monk, Matthieu Ricard, who also has a background in cellular genetics. In the chapter about flow he has this to say:

William James wrote, 'My experience is what I agree to attend to.' Entering the state of flow depends closely on the amount of attention given to the lived experience. If we are to enter into flow, the task must monopolize all our attention and present a challenge commensurate with our abilities. If it is too difficult, tension sets in, followed by anxiety; too easy, and we relax and are soon bored. In the experience of flow, a resonance is established between the action, the external environment, and the mind. In most cases this fluidity is felt as an optimal experience with a great sense of satisfaction. It is the inverse not only of boredom and depression, but also of agitation and distraction. It is interesting to note, too, that so long as the state lasts, there is a loss of reflective self-consciousness. All that remains is the alertness of the subject, who becomes one with his action and has ceased observing himself.

In The Store

Sometimes it is nice to have a small burst of color to layer with your favorite necklaces--especially in the summer. Down in the store we have a small selection of gem necklaces using some of our most beautiful semi precious stones. I also am using some black diamonds and horn...more pictures to come.

Graduation

This year we are having an especially high amount of orders for graduation-- way more than in previous years. One mother has purchased an impressive selection of bangle bracelets in silver and gold for her daughter's high school commencement . What is surprising to us all is that the daughter's collection started with one of our velvet baby bracelets!

Cherry Blossom

I have been working on this little flower for a few days now. I almost don't want to cast it because it looks so sweet in the wax.

Mother's Day Is Upon Us

Here are three versions of the Rosa down in the store. I love this necklace and we got to make a bunch this time around. My birthday falls on Mother's Day this year which will be an extra special treat!

Congratulations to Photo Contest Winners

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
~T. S. Eliot




Spring
~Edna St. Vincent Millay



The Red Wheelbarrow
~William Carlos Williams

Results are in for the National Poetry Month Free Verse photo contest! We want to sincerely thank everyone who participated – we’ve really enjoyed seeing your entries, and we love the effort and creativity you’ve shown. It wasn’t easy to decide on our favorites, but Jeanine Payer and the Academy of American Poets have selected the following three winners who had great concepts for capturing their chosen poetry and turned them into great images.

-Megan Fuentes

Barneys New York Jewelry Catalog Is Out

...and happy to be included are the Weiss and Anders, who are especially lucky to be featured on the page next to my favorite jewelry by Ten Thousand Things.

Elements of Change

It started at the inauguration.

That feeling of pride and excitement.

Walking around in a daze, relishing the moment when for a time worry lifted. We were all home that morning, sitting on the floor watching the television; Jeff, William and I. After Obama’s speech a woman got up and started to read a poem. My first thought was ‘oh no!’ how do you follow THAT? I felt nervous for her and knew that reading a poem right after the inaugural speech was going to be a tall order---it felt like she was walking the high wire. How difficult must it be to write a poem for a presidential inauguration? How hard must it be to read it out loud after a speech like the one Barak Obama gave that day? Well, she did it and it worked. And I felt proud to have been there, hearing the poem read in my living room with my family. I was overjoyed that poetry was a part of the event. I did not expect it. The moment that really struck me was the part about people who make things…as I am in the business of making things with my small staff every day. It is an old fashioned business, this making things to sell. Actual endowed objects emerge from creative ideas, not just ephemeral transactions. A few days later I got an email from a fan imploring me to contact the poet, Elizabeth Alexander, and to use her poem in my work. The woman was so emphatic that she used three text colors and made the font extra large. It got my attention.

I remember running into the shipping room and blurting out this idea and then the brainstorming began. We sat down and decided: why not? Why not seize the day? We decided to make a piece for Elizabeth with her words engraved. The Edmond necklace was selected as it was the perfect size for the last part of her poem which is about love and moving forward ‘in that light’. We hoped she would like it and that we would make a good first impression. Off it went immediately and we waited…and waited….until two weeks went by without a word. I had to call but felt I would just be going through the motions because I feared deep down that this whole exciting project might just not fly... Eventually I made the call and sent the email, and within hours I received the most lovely response back from her handheld saying how much she loved the gift and that she had been on the road, busy every minute. Phew! I was elated. After that initial contact we spoke on the phone a few times and I each time I felt really anxious...as if I was talking to…well, the poet chosen to write the inauguration poem for President Barack Obama! This was exciting stuff.

After deciding what part of the poem I wanted to use, I started thinking about how to frame the words. I decided they needed to be set against a simple, clean backdrop of the precious metal. These are meditative pieces and touchstones. The notion of holding the moment with you and passing it down to your children’s children is what this collection means to me.

The original necklace we sent Elizabeth, the Edmond was just so perfect I included it in the collection with the name Praise and it is the anchor piece; the inspiration for the rest of the pieces for the look and feel which exemplifies my signature style. Each piece was named using words from the poem. I was conscientious about both the line breaks and the way the poetry fits onto the pieces; each tiny element of design took on great importance.

The idea of sending the 18k version of the Praise to Michelle Obama and Air bracelets to her daughters hit me at some point and then it just seemed to make sense to send it out (the silver version) to a short list of other women including Oprah Winfrey who have worked to carry forward the dream of hope. I felt these gifts were appropriate for this collection and it is a source of pride and joy to all of us at Jeanine Payer to know these amazing women are recipients of our heartfelt gift. The usual concept of the celebrity endorsement has lost its importance this year. This is a time when all of us want to celebrate the people doing interesting things and important work that carries the momentum of hope forward.

Everyone at my company has invested energy, time and elbow grease on this project to the point where we have sometimes lost sight of whether people will care and if it will resonate as it has with us. I think the gravity hit me yesterday as we figured out the text for the landing page…it was hard to imaging being in the same sentence as President Barack Obama and Elizabeth Alexander and even more amazing to add the word “exclusive.” Then we decided exactly which pieces we each wanted from the collection as even we, who work with metal and poetry around the clock wanted to carry a part of this historic moment...it is even a significant moment for my own company's history as we are 20 years old this year. What a wonderful way to mark our own anniversary.

I keep asking myself is this a big deal?

And then I gratefully remind myself that it is.

Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.

--Elizabeth Alexander, from Praise Song for the Day

The Tiffany Girls

A rare picture of the 'Tiffany Girls' on the roof of Tiffany Studios--why are they all leaning to the left?

After visiting Artistic Luxury; Faberge, Tiffany & Lalique at the Legion of Honor last Friday, I pulled the books off my shelf to delve into the history of the lamp and window designs from the Tiffany Studios around the turn of the century. On my second visit to the show, the docent told a fascinating story about letters recently found which clearly show that Clara Driscoll was the designer of many of the most famous Tiffany lamps. Most of the iconic Tiffany lamps and windows were designed and put together by a talented group of women approximately 20 years before they could vote! Can you imagine?

My books, Louis Comfort Tiffany and Laurelton Hall (2006) and The Lamps of Louis Comfort Tiffany (2005), explain that the staged photos of the workshops featured only men and that there are very few pictures of the 27 women, headed by Clara Driscoll. These women designed and selected glass for all the nature-inspired windows and lamps. The men, who were unionized workers, united in 1903 and demanded that the women be fired. The company refused but conceded that no additional women would be hired, except to replace any female employees who left.


staged shot of the men working on the nature inspired lamps

The branch of art to which women seem especially adapted, and in which twenty-seven are employed in the Tiffany studios, is the designing and making of windows, lamp shades, etc., in intricate compositions of rich and varied coloring. They do not, on the other hand, achieve as good results as the men in making the same windows and shades, where the design is formal or symmetrical, or where the motive is a repeated one.
In other words, the women lack mechanical genius, but had a marked decorative instinct and a superior color sense.

--1903, Rheta Childe Dorr, journalist interested in unionization and suffragism.


The Wisteria lamp designed by Clara Driscoll

Things I Love About Louis Comfort Tiffany

Louis Comfort Tiffany's art studio, Tiffany house, 1900

• He was wildly rich, eccentric and talented!
• He had brilliant 'theme' fetes with names like The Peacock Ball that were designed simply to expose his guests to his version of beauty.


• He had the most dramatic ‘studio’ I have ever seen.


• After years of experimentation working with chemists and glass artists he invented ‘favrile’ glass which captures the iridescence you find on insect wings and feathers.


• He valued beauty above all else.

Invitation for Louis special 'Studio Hearthwarming.'

Don't forget to show up in costume!