From Tin Foil to Sterling Silver

A smiling 8-year-old sits at her kitchen table, turning pieces of tin foil into shiny silver rings. When they're ready, she proudly shows them off to everyone in the vicinity! These days, Emily Hickman creates timeless hammered sterling silver jewelry in her Shoreline, Washington, studio that is sold in galleries and boutiques across the country.

A selection of Emily Hickman's sterling silver jewelry

Every artist's path is unique, and Hickman's was certainly circuitous. As a child, she was encouraged to try every creative thing she could, from drawing and watercolor, to pottery, papier mache, beaded jewelry and more. Her mother was an artist, drawing the illustrations for department store newspaper ads in the pre-digital age, so she witnessed art as a career early in life.

The ever-popular rectangle pendant and earrings

The childhood ring-making experience shows an early love of jewelry, too. While her mother didn't wear much, and encouraged Hickman “not to wear it all at once,” her grandmother had a huge collection of costume jewelry. Hickman inherited some of those pieces, and recalls having fun enjoying them as a kid.

In High School, she got her first taste of metalsmithing from a talented and encouraging teacher. But after that, she pursued the more traveled road of entering the work force, going through a series of boring, and physically demanding, jobs. She didn't get back into jewelry making until her 40s, when she got into bead work again. Soon it became too limiting, so she signed up for metalsmithing classes at North Seattle Community College.

Emily Hickman in her colorful studio in Shoreline, Washington

She knew almost immediately she wanted to do jewelry professionally. She was told she'd never make a living that way, so don't bother. “But I'm stubborn,” Hickman proudly announced, and moved forward anyway. By this time, those physically demanding jobs had taken a toll on her body, requiring foot surgery. She was determined to find a new career before her body gave out entirely.

Teardrop pendant
with Moonstone

As seems all too common, other events conspired to appear to steer her away from this dream, but that stubborn streak still won out. She got her business license on her birthday, April 11^th of 2006. In June that same year, right as she was setting up her tent for her first retail show, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. But rather than give it up, the metalsmithing is just what kept her sane throughout that year of treatment. Happily, she got a clean bill of health a year later.

She continued to take metalsmithing courses for about three years altogether, acquiring bits and pieces of equipment along the way to supply her own studio. A fair amount of experimentation goes on during this phase of an artist's career. Within the field of metalsmithing, there are many possible roads an artist can choose to master: stone-setting, casting, enamels, forging, lathe-turning, to name a few. A student learns them all to find out what makes her heart sing. In that process, some dead ends are inevitable.

More tools on the desk

Storage chest full of tools

Such was the case for Hickman, who had three distinctly different lines at first. It seemed a good idea at the time, because the potential market would be broad. Surely most people would like at least one of those lines, the thinking goes. Some art business classes helped her realize it's unwise to try to be all things to all people. Choose one to focus on, and let the others go. She chose the hammered silver line.

Wall of hammers for various purposes

The first iteration of this line features geometric shapes in gently-concave form with a hammered surface in either a shiny or brushed finish. This collection still makes up the foundation of her entire business. Hickman's goal was to create jewelry with both an ancient and contemporary feel, that “you could wear with either your blue jeans, or that little black dress,” she says. To achieve that timeless feel, she emphasized using tools that have been available since people first began working with metal: silver sheet, silver wire, a saw, a hammer, a drill, and a polishing method.

The Go-Go Necklace

Another piece of Hickman's jewelry philosophy is remaining neutral. Everything in her line is silver, white, black or clear. No colored stones are ever used, because “that would limit the clothing you could wear it with,” Hickman says. “If I use a garnet, you'll only wear that necklace with your red outfits.” Thus if a stone is added, it will be moonstone or white pearls only. She emphasizes that her pieces are intended to be interchangeable, too. You can have an exactly matched set if you want, but you could also pair a particular pendant shape with a differently shaped earring. Avoiding “trendy”, Hickman wants her jewelry never to go out of style.

Hickman focused on the geometric collection for the first two years of building her wholesale production jewelry business, which began a little over two years ago after some years of finding local consignment opportunities. By focusing so carefully, she has been able to build her business gradually, so that now her jewelry can be found in 17 states across the country.

Floribunda pendant and earrings with black pearl

With that foundation under her belt, she allowed herself some leeway to experiment. In March of this year, she introduced the Floribunda collection into the line, to great success. Orders from her existing customers flooded in, and new accounts were opened. While floral in shape, all other components remain the same: sterling silver with a hammered surface.

Encouraged by Floribunda's success, Hickman is now experimenting with a new collection. Inspirations for this come from mid-19th-century jewelry artists such as Alexander Calder and others who often worked in copper. Elements of Pacific Islander culture come into play as well. These pieces are mostly flat rather than domed, but maintain her line's consistency being made of sterling silver with a hammered surface. None of these are currently available in any shops, but we get a sneak peek at them here, and some will make appearances at her trunk show at Manya Vee Selects on July 19^th.

Potential future collection 

What does Hickman's future hold? “I saw a video a few years back about a 90-year old woman who was still happily making jewelry. I want to be like that!” she says with a huge smile. Her goal is to expand her wholesale business into all 50 states, “without getting so big that I can't make it all myself.” Sounds to me that we can rest assured that we'll be able to enjoy Hickman's jewelry, in all its as-yet-unseen interations, for many years to come.

Enjoy the pictures below, which provide an insight into some of the details that make up the world of a production jeweler, as she shows us how she provides consistency for quality control in the Floribunda collection.

Computerized flower patterns. Glue pattern to silver to saw out by hand.  Sheet with flowers cut out, balls for centers.

To give shape to the flat flower, it is placed in a dapping block, and a wooden dapper is tapped with a hammer.

If you can't join us for our Emily Hickman trunk show on Thursday evening, July 19, from 5 - 8 pm, stop by later to see what new treasures from Emily we have in the store.  Some of her Floribunda collection is available in our online shop, too!

Manya Vee

ManyaVeeSelects.com

It's a Wonderful Mystery: Birgit Moenig's Silk Scarves

Birgit Moenig has been sharing her love of painting on silk for over 25 years. What she loves even more than painting on silk is meeting women who feel happier because they are wearing one of her scarves. And that's what it all comes down to: bringing as much happiness as possible, through the beauty a silk scarf can bring to a person and her world.

A happy customer, wearing her
new Birgit scarf

Hailing from Germany originally, Birgit was exposed to silk painting very early. Many German housewives know how to paint on silk, so it was a common, everyday thing to do. Initially, she just picked up some silk, opened some dye, and put it on the silk as she had seen so many others do so effortlessly. She applied her artist eye to it as well, and got inspiration from other artist friends also applying dye to silk. “It's an on-going learning process even today,” she exclaims. “I still talk to my artist friends, and we are always trying new things to see what works best.”

Before painting on silk, Birgit had tried watercolor on paper, “but it didn't take,” she says. Acrylic on canvas was better, and in fact she painted and sold miniature folk paintings at the Pike Place Market when she and her husband first arrived in the States in 1980. But dyeing silk was what she really loved to do. “Designing something and staying inside the lines isn't very fun,” she says. “So I developed my silk dyeing to avoid that. It's a more abstract approach with colors overlapping and flowing together.”

Using a brush to "paint" the dye
onto the white silk

People are drawn to the beautiful colors Birgit uses on her scarves. At Manya Vee Selects, we love to watch people have their eye drawn to our scarf rack and its colorful array of her scarves. They can't resist walking over and touching them! Birgit finds the color choices and blending to be a constant challenge. “It's a wonderful mystery. When it's all done, that's when you know whether it worked or not.”    

Multi-colored scarf by Birgit

The technique is what causes the challenge. A non-toxic, water-based liquid dye is applied to dry, white silk. Colors are always more intense when they are wet, so controlling the strength of each hue is difficult. In addition, not as many colors are available as before, so that means more blending is required to achieve a full palette with lots of variety. In the end, Birgit confesses that her color choices are very intuitive. Of course, I have a feeling her 25 years of experience helps guide the intuition to get her beautiful results.

Birgit's scarf rack at Manya Vee Selects

Birgit works with her husband, Dieter, closely these days. This teamwork began when he lost all contracts for his own business after 9/11. He had been making high-tech satellites for ships. That left him with a lot of time on his hands. One piece of equipment he used in his business is a water-jet, which can cut cleanly through metals. He designed some 3-D ornaments made out of Boeing surplus aluminum, each one cut with that water jet. They were very successful. More designs followed based on customer requests.

Next, customers began asking for 3-D earrings. This required much smaller pieces, and thus more precision in cutting. His huge machine wasn't made for such detail. Upon discovering it would cost $28,000 to re-tool it, he gave up for a while. But the requests kept coming, so he figured out a way to re-tool it himself, costing only $2,000. He graduated the metal to titanium since aluminum has such a low perceived value, and grew his own customer base with this new product.

Three notKnot styles

A scarf woven into a
notKnot

The next product he invented ties Dieter's and Birgit's respective products together very closely – the notKnot! Based on a concept floating around in Birgit's head, each notKnot is cut out with the water jet using thick stainless steel. It allows a person a great deal of flexibility in how to wear the scarves, by weaving them in and out of the openings, making the scarf a bit more like a piece of jewelry.

Now, in addition to showing her scarves at Manya Vee Selects in Edmonds, they tour the country together doing art fairs and selling their wares together, finding new fans at each new show they do. Birgit loves returning to a place and meeting customers for a second, third and fourth time. It gives her great joy to hear how much the women enjoy wearing her scarves. It is an extra special day when someone sends her a card or email letting her know how much they love wearing her scarves.

Birgit and Dieter at an art show

We're in our 12^th year now at Manya Vee Selects, and Birgit is one of just a few artists whose work we've carried since the beginning.  Her scarves find passionate new wearers almost daily. We love passing along those stories to Birgit from our own customers, who simply can't resist that scarf rack and end up buying one, then two, then another for a gift, and so on. Go ahead and write your story here in the comments about your Birgit scarves, so we can share it with her too.

And of course, make your own pilgrimage to The Scarf Rack, and see for yourself how happy and beautiful a new Birgit scarf can make you feel!

See you soon,

Manya

P.S.  Here are links to previous blogs that show some scarf-tying methods.

http://manyaveeselects.blogspot.com/2011/11/3-scarf-ideas-to-spiff-up-your-wardrobe.html

http://manyaveeselects.blogspot.com/2010/07/from-neophyte-to-expert-in-2-hours.html

April 16, 2012

Win - win - win - win!

It's such fun when something new comes to the gallery.  Today, on a dreary and wet Monday, the entire place got livened up by a delivery from Edmonds artist Amy Vakontios and her Sagapo candles.  You already know that we like win-win situations quite a bit.  Well, Amy's candles are sort of a win-win-win-win and keep winning deal.

First off, she uses palm wax, which is a renewable resource.  It's not paraffin, which is derived from fossil fuels.  Paraffin candles are the ones that make black spots on the ceiling above where they've been lit.  But not palm wax, no!  It burns cleanly and wonderfully.

Next "win" on the list are the fragrances Amy uses.  Not one to scrimp here, Amy uses the highest quality fragrances available for use with candles.  She knows a lot about this from first-hand experience, because she used to work for the only perfumery in Washington state, which provided lots of fragrances for the entire candle industry.  Talk about first-hand experience.  Because of this, her fragrances have very little solvent in them, so the scent comes through in a more pure form - not laced with chemicals.  This is much nicer to breathe, I can assure you.

Another "win" is that Amy painstakingly tests each candle to make sure the best possible wick is used.  So I asked her the other day just how many wick options are out there.  She said over 200!  Who knew?!?  So much for my one-day candle-making class taken years ago when I learned that there were maybe 2 kinds of wick.  Amy tests them to make sure the wick she uses with a particular wax in a particular shape will burn all the way to the edge and make the best use of every millimeter of wax available!  Waste not, want not...

But wait!  There's more!  Purchasing a candle made by Amy, an Edmonds artist, from Manya Vee Selects, an Edmonds business, means making the most of your spending money by infusing it right back into the community.  I'm sure you've heard it already, but shopping at the mall sends most of your money far away from here.  Shopping locally keeps 68 cents of each dollar in our area.  Shopping at Manya Vee Selects keeps about 80 cents or more here because you are supporting (1) Manya Vee Selects and (2) a local artist.

So there you have it!  Respect the earth! Make your home smell great! Improve our local economy!  It just doesn't get any better than that.

By the way, Amy's candles are available on our website too: Sagapo Candles

Manya
manyaveeselects.com