A cup of steaming chai in hand, staring out across the waters of the Bosporus strait from the window of his home studio, the jeweler known simply as Castro is a long way from New York.
Four years ago, Castro gave up life in the US in favor of the cultural melting pot that is Istanbul. After spending a weekend in the Turkish city, he found himself lured by the slower pace of life, cheaper cost of living, and globally centralized location that would allow him to travel easily to clients and Fashion Weeks.
“I felt like I was in a rat race in New York, like I’d become a robot,” says Castro. “I came way off my plan to make a name for myself. It turned into ‘make a bunch of money,’ and that became my mission every day. I called my son to come [visit me once] and he said, ‘I don’t want to come, because all you do is work on your day off.’ I needed to make a change.”
Crash course in jewelry
Castro started his jewelry career more than 500 miles away from the city that tail-ends the name of his brand, Castro NYC. He was born in Toledo, Ohio, which he laughingly describes as a place where “if a guy has a wine glass, women won’t
talk to you.”
After taking an intensive jewelry course over a weekend and a short-lived job making repairs for a jeweler, he made the leap to opening his own shop in the city. “I remember everything my teacher taught me,” he recalls of that formative weekend session, during which he claims to have clocked 16 hours a day with his mentor. “I opened a jewelry store in Toledo [selling other designers’ work]
and did repairs in the back, eventually doing a custom ring for someone. That is where I got the bug. I loved the process and the smile on his face.
I was hooked.”
Thus, the seed of creating his own jewelry designs was sown. However, his career took a different path. Castro swapped jewelry for a job in fashion in Chicago, Illinois, but when he later moved to New York in 2006, jewels came back into his life. Setting up a table on the sidewalk in the city’s Soho neighborhood, he began to sell handmade jewelry — leather designs, wire-wrapped crystals. Yet these were a far cry from the precious, evocative pieces the Castro NYC brand sells today.
Getting a head
It is rare to be able to describe a jewel as unique and mean it, but Castro’s creations certainly have no contemporaries. Asked what drives his creative process, he replies: “To be the only one with something. Where someone can’t say, ‘I’ve seen that before…I can do that…it reminds me of....’ All statements I hate. I also love when someone says [my work is] ‘beautiful, dark, weird, scary, unusual.’ Words I love.”
The creations for which Castro
NYC has become known do indeed have a macabre edge. A keen antique hunter, Castro was with a friend when he stumbled across a tiny porcelain doll known as a pupin, which was made as a companion for larger, life-size dolls in centuries gone by. It was the type of toy that might get a starring role in a creepy horror flick, and his friend encouraged him to make something with it.
While Castro was keen on the idea, the doll gathered dust in his studio for a full year before he found inspiration. What he did was behead the unsettling doll — “It kept looking at me, it was driving me crazy” — and set it onto a necklace as a trophy-style pendant.
This was the start of the Castro NYC Dollies, which fetch thousands of dollars apiece. The usually gemstone-encrusted creations have the settings drilled straight into their fragile porcelain faces and bodies, and sport angelic — or perhaps avian — accessories such as gold wings loaded
with diamonds in mixed cuts. Some of these trinkets can take more than 200 hours of bench time to create. Castro is gleefully tapping into Istanbul’s jewelry community of “old world masters” to outsource and elevate the goldsmithing and
stone-setting.
While there are some accessible jewels under the Castro NYC banner — such as the collectible Infinity Locks, which can serve as charms and sell at stores like Stella Flame Gallery in the Hamptons for around $3,000 — most can and should be classified as art jewels. Baroque pearl “eggs” with inlaid gems hang from black diamond pavé snake-head earrings. Hand-shaped rings with ruby-tipped nails flip the bird at onlookers. Repurposed mink fur becomes a faux bear paw, topped with a tiny antique porcelain bear head that’s gotten a tribal-inspired makeover of precious facial studs.
Global goals
Needless to say, these jewels attract a particular type of customer, though it varies from country to country. In Russia, Castro says, he sells to “younger independent women,” while in the US and Europe, it’s usually to women over 40 who are independently minded world travelers and love the arts. In his new home of Turkey, he has found his following is mainly married women over 55, and “the husband pays for it.”
Though Castro is enjoying his time in Istanbul, this won’t be his final destination. He sees it as a stop on a life-changing relocation journey from the US to West Africa. There, he would like to find somewhere to settle down where he can continue to create his wild and wonderful jewels. He also has plans to establish a workshop there where he can pass on the gift of jewelry making to others. He hopes this will inspire a local jewelry industry that will one day be capable of manufacturing his Castro NYC designs.
This year has been filled with much reflection and contemplation for Castro, as it has for many of us. “You’ve got to expand your mind in ways that you never thought it could be expanded,” he says.
With his jewels already rich in singular narratives, it will be exciting to see where the transformative pressure cooker of 2020 leads this irrepressibly eclectic designer next.
castronyc.com
Images: Castro NYC
Article from the Rapaport Magazine - October 2020. To subscribe click here.