Twist Trunkshow June 26th

I am so looking forward to my visit to Twist, one of my longest standing retail relationships in the history of JP. The owners, Paul and Lauren Schneider, tracked me down 17 years ago in my studio when I was a three person operation. I remember my horror as they came in and there was nowhere to sit that wasn't covered....in dust!!! I am embarrassed to say that I didn't have proper ventilation back then besides the working windows. They were troopers and have supported me ever since. It has been several years since I have visited so it should be really fun.

New Life in the Studio

I took a trip to the Flora Grubb Gardens last week.


They helped me pick the perfect mix for my flower boxes in my design studio...


It is amazing what new life can do for a room.


I got some other plants as well for the rest of the studio. Here is the wholesale room where we meet


I like C. Jere metal wall sculptures because they loosely relate to what we do but in a large scale.


This cheerful bright green guy is for the shipping/customer service/websale room.


I came in to find the Jeanine Payer boxes were just splayed out in front like a cornucopia.

Janine B. told me about the amazing Flora Grubb Gardens a while back when she first went there to find our succulents for the retail store flower box. Because our building is a historic landmark we are not allowed to have an awning. And our sign is tiny. The flower box is the only reason I think people are able to find us! So the succulent has become our version of a sandwich board, and quite the conversation piece. People stop to take pictures of it all the time which is really surprising to me. It must be due to the Little Shop of Horrors size it has grown into.

A Handful of Salt

I want to thank Regina Connell and Emily Eisenhart for writing such a wonderful post today on their inspired design blog A Handful of Salt. I am extremely flattered to be in such great company and it was really a fun interview. I am included in their list of DesignCraft Heroines --which I love--and I am thrilled to be the first jewelry designer they have profiled. I recently found out about this gem of a blog when they featured my fellow DesignCraft Heroines, Rae Dunn and Josie Jurczenia, and their hand made ceramics. Thank you again, Regina and Emily!

Bracelet Layering by Melissa

Unleash your inner rock goddess...
Zephyr, Rennes, Alene, Barbara, and Carina bracelets


There's something almost rock 'n roll about having an arm full of bracelets. I remember having a poster of the seminal cool 80's band, X, on my bedroom wall and admiring the way their singer Exene Cervenka used to pile up her vintage bracelets on her arm. Exene, by the way, is not only a great singer, but also a fantastic poet and ex-wife to both bandmate John Doe AND actor Viggo Mortensen. Lucky lady indeed. It must've been something about those bracelets...



Exene Cervenka, 1982

Thrunk Show this Saturday at Earthworks in Los Altos

This Saturday I am excited to be in cute downtown Los Altos at the fantastic jewelry store and gallery, Earthworks, from 11 to 4. They have sold my work for many years along with many other great jewelry designers. We will have a group of new pieces as well as a selection of one of a kinds. Please come visit me and my co-pilot, Kazu, if you are in the area.

Happy Layering

My new favorite combo is my 18k Fuentes, Water Diamonds and a tiny heart.

Come Visit Me...

I have another fun trunk show coming up this Friday at Blue Windows in Long Beach. I'll have many one of a kind pieces with stones and diamond slices that look amazing against engraved gold. I can't believe I have sold my wares to this store for ten years and am looking forward to finally seeing the store with my own two eyes. I spent some high school years living in Seal Beach right next to the Belmont Shore area where the store is so I am so looking forward to seeing that area again. I was one of two girls in town who seriously surfed back in the early 80's--this will be a trip down memory lane.

Here are some lovely posts from Heather's blog: http://bluewindows.net/journal/. The address is 5276 East 2nd Street, Long Beach and the phone number is 562-434-7195. The event is from 1 to 6 so please do come visit me if you are in the area.

Latest Inspiration

I would love to work in this place.




Recently I went to the Legion of Honor for inspiration and luckily discovered the English porcelain room. Tiny hand painted moths and insects along with the fable stories were done so delicately on the translucent white porcelain that it made my heart race. This reminded me that I own a beautiful book (all in German) on the Nymphenburg Porzellen Factory so I went back to it and looked with new eyes...which led to my going to the Nymphenburg website to learn more about the collaborations they have done with contemporary artists. I already knew about and love the Ted Meuhling pieces and I learned about a project they did with a couple of Dutch artists (Kram/Weisshaar) called 'My Private Sky' which is extraordinary. Sick really. You tell them your birthday and the exact time you were born and they hand paint the corresponding constellations onto a set of porcelain dishes. It is so beautiful it is crazy.

They have been making figurines like this since the 1700's at the Nymphengurger factory.

The amazing thing about the Nymphenburg factory is not just that it is powered by a water wheel or that it has been in business since the 1700's, but it is that the artists learn everything from the masters before them, verbally. SoIt may take years before they are allowed to make a certain dish because the knowledge of the colors and design are so involved.They do not use templates. So when you see one of those Ted Meuhling plates with a single butterfly on it and wonder why it is so expensive... stop and look really close, really close--it isn't a decal. I find this so amazing that places like this exsist and that people still care enough about truly doing what it takes to learn and exucute their craft on this level.

Trunkshow at Barneys in Scottsdale this Saturday

I don't do trunk shows that often but we have a few special ones coming up. This weekend I am headed out to Scottsdale with Kazu by my side to visit the beautiful new Barneys in Fashion Square from 10 to 4 on Saturday. I am going out a day early so I can get a look at the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation at the Taliesin West House that is supposed to be amazing.

Wisps and Hints

What songs travel toward us
from far away
to deepen our days?

I asked Naomi Shihab Nye, a highly honored, award winning poet, to tell me about what it is like having people find her words on our jewelry. I also wanted to know about her creative process and here is what she had to say:

Jeanine Payer's jewelry reminds me of precious perfectly-weighted nuggets of beauty -- the sort we dreamed of as kids, filling our pockets with shiny stones that felt yummy in our hands. Having lines from my poems inscribed on Jeanine's bracelets, necklaces, and one ring (my traveling companion!) is an amazing blessing. A poem is a nugget. A line of a poem is a tinier incremental nugget. Nuggets finding friends. I prefer publishing on Jeanine's astonishing jewelry to publishing in BOOKS.

My creative process is very simple. I write often, in a notebook, with a pencil or a pen, and I go back to it. Hospitality to the images and snippets which drift through all our minds, an attention to signs of all kinds, an affection for bits and pieces, scraps and "wisps" or "hints" -- as William Stafford called them -- this is how everything begins.

Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known.

--Naomi Shihab-Nye

On My Mind

click image to enlarge

I have fallen hopelessly in love with the jewelry of Alexander Calder. He made about 1,800 pieces (all by himself, no help) for galleries, friends and family and if you had a piece you were definitely in the artistic 'in crowd'--think Peggy Guggenheim. I came across the amazing book on his jewelry, or tome, at my favorite place on earth: The Mechanics Institute Library. I can go there and think and it is two blocks from my studio and is a treasure.

Drawing, Dreaming and Making

I have been working on a little hand inspired by a Filipo painting and also have done little studies of my son's hand. There is something poetic about hands in paintings and sculpture and I personally love drawing them. Recently I went to the Legion of Honor to do studies of the Rodin hands which was fun, except when people walked up--it makes me feel self conscious.

In addition to these odd little hands I have been going through all my one of a kind materials, alluvial diamonds and stones. I have not had a chance to use these much lately and being in that zone has been really gratifying, grounding and fun. I look at time spent 'drawing, dreaming and making' as time spent on a lifelong practice. It is like my 'Tai Chi" and I am looking forward to someday getting that black belt.

My Mother's Day Collection by Melissa

Growing up through Jeanine Payer


Back in 1999, I purchased my first Jeanine Payer piece at Neiman Marcus (the necklace shown in photo, far left). It was a silver pod-like pendant which revealed a tiny antique photo of a baby with handpainted gold angel wings. 11 years later when I had my son, I had the original photo replaced by a custom photo of him smiling for the first time. This began my collection of photo necklaces, which showcases my little boy in different stages of his toddlerhood. By wearing my custom photo necklaces, I feel part of him is magically with me at all times.

We Walk On in Private Missions of the Heart

Avila, Toledo, Milan, Amatrice and Monterey

Ian Burgham is an award winning Canadian poet whose work I have been honored to use for many years. I asked him to say a few words about his experience having his work found on our jewelry...

I've been thinking about what it is to have people wear my words on your jewelry. When someone buys your work I'm sure there are many considerations that go into the decision.

But where it begins is with you Jeanine. As I see it, your vision of what is delicate and beautiful as an object is tied to an understanding of the deepest things that make our selves human, and connect us with each other, the world and worlds beyond time. The beautiful, beauty does that. It is in William Blake's terms the product of the "Divine Imagination" in us at its best.

To add my words to your pieces imparts another layer. I think it is not what I meant by the words I write that matters, but what you know they mean to you that influences your choice to use them.

But finally, the real magic happens when someone encounters the jewelry, a complete stranger, and purchases it to wear it; words mix with design and the purity of stone and metal creating a new artifact. And more than that, the piece carries high emotion and meaning, private meaning that only the wearer can know. Everyone brings their heart's experience to that piece.

The jewelry and words are no longer ours. Now they are of the soul of the person who wears them. The piece becomes a declaration as to an understanding of the best of ourselves and the best in us. And maybe a reminder that we walk on in private missions of the heart.

--Ian Burgham

The Marceline

We are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love.

--William Blake

The Marceline necklace was inspired by the Rosa, a hit as far as custom photo pieces go. I think the round crystal gives it an antique, sort of French reliquary feeling. Everyone in the studio wants one, even those of us who already own a Rosa...and I am in support of the idea that you cannot have too many photo pieces, especially when the image is kept secret behind a tinkling golden door. The Marceline also comes in an all silver version.