Vermont jewelers craft singular pieces of art

By Diane E. Foulds
Globe Correspondent / January 20, 2008

BURLINGTON, Vt. - Of all the arts, jewelry might be the most personal.

Sandra Owens finds inspiration in more mundane objects. A friend brought her a pile of antique watch parts - gears, faces, and hands - that she converted to earrings and pins. She found spent bullet casings and turned them into Soldiers' Prayer Rings. With her husband, Bill, she operates Silverwear, a small gallery in tiny Benson. Over the years she has noticed that customers are growing more discriminating. "They're getting tired of just owning 'stuff,' " she says. "I'm hearing more and more, 'I want something special, something that is me.' "

That something often amounts to marrying jewelry with personal mementos such as a trinket bought long ago in a dime store. Owens embeds the object in gold or silver, changing it into a precious keepsake that can be worn every day, not just a personal relic "to put in a box and take out on special occasions."

Vermont jeweler Sandra Owens works primarily in silver but also uses gemstones and gold, such as these 14-karat golden orbs measuring. They are cut from long gold wires, then sculpted, filed, and polished. They retail at $685 a pair.

(Photo courtesy of Sandra Owens)

Vermont jeweler Sandra Owens creates handmade pieces like these earrings, which are crafted from sterling silver, antique watch faces and gears, a 14-karat gold nail, and fossilized mastodon ivory from the Aleutian Islands. A phrase from an Emily Dickinson poem is inscribed on the ivory in Japanese ink: "...this is the land the sunset washes". The post-backed earrings retail for $325.

(Photo courtesy of Sandra Owens)