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Designer Sarah Graham has a lot in common with 19th century Americans who headed west in search of finding a life or career where they could make their mark.
Originally, the San Francisco-based designer seemed to be following in her family's business-minded footsteps. Her father is a CPA and her sister a successful restaurateur. Sarah even earned a bachelor's degree in international business, fully intending to pursue a business career.
"From the beginning I didn't expect I would be a jeweler, but I really loved the business," she recalls.
She worked in a retail jewelry store and learned painstaking training in cutting, soldering, wax model making and other bench work techniques while working in a jewelry workshop.
So Sarah was well equipped and trained when in 2000 she burst onto the scene with a revolutionary concept, combining gold with a type of blackened steel. At her first trade show, where she made her international debut, her innovative product was a runaway success.
For Sarah, design is all about contrasts. No where is that better exemplified than in her unusual combinations of metals, which is a signature of her designs.
"My jewelry is all about the metals," Sarah says. While expertly trained in goldsmithing, Sarah also delved into experimenting with other metals, settling upon oxidized cobalt chrome, a kind of steel that has a matte black appearance and is actually 60% lighter than gold.
Sarah artfully juxtaposes her blackened cobalt chrome with 18k yellow, rose and white gold, adding in white and cognac diamonds, and sometimes pearls.
"Actually my cobalt chrome sells the gold. When you see it paired with any color of gold, both appear richer and more interesting," she notes.
The result is jewelry that is both bold and daring without sacrificing any elegance or sophistication that assure its timelessness.
Even beyond her use of atypical metals, Sarah instills in each piece a rare combination of femininity and organic textures. Many of her shapes and textures are inspired directly from nature: river rocks, drift wood, coral, seed pods and plants. It's almost as if Sarah extracts the essence of these objects, replicating their nuances and subtleties in metals. And as any metalsmith can tell you, that's no easy feat.
"Trying to be safe is the most unsafe thing," Sarah says. "When clients first saw my jewelry -- even touched it -- they tell me my jewelry is unlike anything they have ever seen. It's my biggest compliment."
Sarah is constantly evolving how she mixes her metals, and refining the organic textures that define her look. All her hard work and ingenuity has been rewarded including being named Designer of the Year several times, most recently by the Women's Jewelry Association.
Beyond the fascinating materials Sarah uses, there's her love of translating nature, natural shapes and organic wonders into jewelry design. Each piece from the slimmest stack ring to her largest links has a naturalistic texture that begs to be touched.
A lover of the outdoors, Sarah has found inspirations on hikes in the mountains and walks on the beach. Just some of her natural inspirations include river rocks tumbled about in white water rapids, driftwood found on a beach, decayed wood displaying a lacelike structure or Jacaranda pods, dangling from a specimen in an arboretum.
Why she's even created an elegant chandelier-like design based upon a single-cell marine organism.
"While I have always known that to get a 'random' or 'organic' look one must measure and layout carefully. But I had no idea just how symmetrical nature is when viewed at a micro level. Seemingly haphazard petals or branches are actually laid out with surprisingly precise proportions that have given me a new appreciation for nature."
Sarah says it's ironic how many times she uses a digital millimeter gauge and calculator to figure out how best to replicate a natural design into her palette of metals.
"Actually much of nature is based upon specific proportions," Sarah says. Which she follows to a certain degree.
"Once a shape is in place, we let go of formulas and breathe life into a piece by adding in indiscriminate touches or additions," she says.
Thus while truly based on organic formulas, her designs remain slightly abstract as well. "It wouldn't be mine with a touch of chaos!"
Bright colors aren't my thing. That's why I love the genius of Bottega Veneta where the patterns and textures take center stage.
I really like Rachel Comey, too, her tailoring is perfection. And although I don't relate to her as a celebrity, I have to admit Victoria Beckham's dresses are great.
I think there's a parallel in what they shop for in their clothing to their jewelry shopping. They look for small, emerging designers
in smaller boutiques and better department stores. They are more concerned about the personal service, interaction with the designer and finding things that really fit well. And it doesn't have to be a major name designer.
One of our chain necklaces. They are perennial bestsellers since they can be worn everyday, appropriate for dressing up or dressing down.
1. A great pair of boots that is stylish and comfortable. Living in hilly San Francisco, I seldom wear heels.
2. Comfortable sandals for warmer weather. I like Cole Haan.
A camping vacation to Vieques in Puerto Rico.
My art studio in Santa Cruz, where I have a bench, is a great getaway. And Big Sur near Carmel, where I started in the jewelry business.
A fingerprint -- or rather toe print necklace in 18k gold. The toe prints are from my son, born in 2010. I also have a fingerprint necklace with my husband's prints. We do these on a custom basis.
I'd say any of our stacking rings. They are a fun way to create a look by choosing different colors and combining them. Also our oxidized cobalt chrome hoop earrings.
It's not necessarily a famous person. I really admire women who don't care about dictates of fashion. They see their wardrobes as a way to reflect their own individual personalities.
A woman who understands the power of accessorizing. She has self confidence in her style and she knows how a great piece of jewelry can transcend fads and be a statement in her wardrobe for years.
Knowing her love for nature's pure designs, a relative visiting the Huntington Botanical Garden insisted Sarah see a Jacaranda pod. A true marvel of natural design, its beauty lies in the unusual structure of a pair of opposite compound leaves that seemed to have a pretty ruffle around the edges. The two sides of the pod join at the top and spread apart creating an interior space, the perfect setting to add movement with dangles of diamonds.
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A signature look from Sarah, the Pebble collection is inspired by the natural shapes found in stones tossed among the currents of a river. Once jagged edges of rocks now have been smoothed and gently shaped and tumbled into softened yet irregular forms. The outlines of these smooth stones are translated into simple links, lying side by side. Nature's own version of geometry.
Luckily for Sarah Graham, she can find inspiration in the most ordinary of objects. A four leaf clover shape in one of the custom-made drawplates her workshop uses to pull handmade wire through to twist into chain, inspired what has become one of her best known collections: Clover. The chains in this collection also have Sarah's organic touch. A twisted texture makes each handmade link appear as if it were once a vine on a tree.
The Flowering Coral collection is based on one of the thousands of corals illustrated by Ernst Haeckel, the preeminent German biologist, zoologist, naturalist, philosopher, physician and artist who discovered and described thousands of new species in the 19th century.
"His concentration on form rather than function allowed him to make leaps in his studies that other scientists -- with their heads buried in their data -- were not able to make," Sarah says. "His findings proved what I always strive to portray in my jewelry: art and science are one in the same. When searching for pure beauty, one needs look no further than their natural surroundings."
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