Few fine jewelers find their signature style in their kitchen, but that’s how Julez Bryant launched her design identity — gold-heavy pieces with an organic finish. The Carlsbad, California-based designer, who isn’t formally taught and was previously the director of a technology company, recalls that her first gold creation looked imperfect because she didn’t have the required skill sets. She thought, “I don’t know how to polish — well, I will scratch it. I got a knife out of my kitchen drawer, and that’s how it started.”
The outcome of this home experiment was the No. 1 ring, a block ring with a scratch finish, scattered with white diamonds. It is a bold, unisex statement piece that 17 years later is still one of Bryant’s most popular creations. In April this year, a custom-made larger version of the ring was spotted on the jewelry-clad fingers of actor Kristian Nairn at the New York premiere of
Games of Thrones’ final season.
Nairn also fell for one of Bryant’s Ghostrider pendants. The initial model of the gem-set skull jewel won Bryant a Couture Design Award — the People’s Choice — in 2018. It is an emotionally-charged and poignantly meaningful piece, as Bryant designed it at the time of her mother’s passing. “Her spirit and goodness are in these pieces,” the designer says.
Creating jewelry to commemorate the departed was the genesis of Bryant’s career change. In the early 2000s, a necklace she had made out of a crystal charm bracelet she’d received from a friend who’d passed away from cancer caught the eye of a store owner in Solana Beach, California. Overnight, Bryant started making more necklaces that instantly sold. She didn’t enroll in jewelry college; instead, she chose to experiment with casting gold and finishing it with her toolbox hammer, preferring to “work with the imperfections versus trying to make it perfect and shiny.”
Outside the mainstream
Founded in 2003, her company does all its work in-house. “[We are] one of the only jewelers in the US that do everything in our studio. We refine the gold from here, we hand-roll, hand-cut, the way it was done thousands of years ago,” she says. “I am proud of our work because you can tell that somebody actually makes it.”
Coming to the industry as an outsider, Bryant trusted her intuition rather than trying to fill a gap in the market, even if it meant going against acquired tastes. For one thing, she was making rose gold collections at a time when most fine jewelers were rejecting the alloy.
By moving away from a mainstream, high-polish look and integrating her personal enthusiasm for big antique badges and old rusty chains at shipyards — as well as her love of nature and the sea — Bryant has created a collection that exudes laid-back elegance, restrained beauty and an earthy spirit. Her gold pieces, usually hammered with a satin finish, are available in white, yellow and rose gold and often contain diamonds or colorful gemstones. Her charms, rings, bangles and gold-bead necklaces are suited to layering, and as her enticingly curated Instagram account shows, they come to life when natural light hits them.
With the motto that beauty lies in simplicity, Bryant has earned loyal clients over the years who collect her streamlined yet powerful pieces. The women wearing the brand are mostly self-purchasing, between 38 and 50, financially independent and professionally successful, the designer reports. They are more likely to live in coastal cities, Silicon Valley, university towns like Boston, and outdoorsy mountain towns. “My work is worn every day, so it’s not kept in a jewelry box, and it’s not kept in a safe,” she says.
The designer’s bridal pieces and custom work tend to be more sophisticated and intricate than her everyday staples, though they still reflect her dedication to textured gold, consummate craftsmanship and play of light.
From earth to eternity
When it comes to choosing retail partners, Bryant adopts the same thoughtful, customer-focused approach she puts into her creative process. “I am very mindful of where our jewelry goes. I only like to sell to places and retailers that...not even so much understand how the product is made, but that they really service the client and show them how to layer it,” she says.
Bryant spends a lot of time on the road, attending trunk shows that let her connect with the people who sell her work, and meet the women who wear her creations. This month, however, she’ll be traveling away from her studio on the beach for a different reason: to explore the source of the diamond pipeline. Following a June meeting with Botswana’s first lady in Las Vegas, she’s joining a small group of designers invited to visit De Beers’ diamond operations in the country.
“I feel it’s very important to tell that story of how things come out of the earth, who these people are who do that work, what the life cycle of these stones is, and how they end up on someone and become part of their life history,” she says. She hopes what she learns from the trip will “help [young women and men] understand that they’re making a giant difference in somebody’s life. When we are using the properties of the earth for good things, we are not disposing of them. [The diamond jewels] they wear every day of their life, hopefully they will pass them on to their loved ones. These things are outliving us.”
Image: julezbryant.com Article from the Rapaport Magazine - November 2019. To subscribe click here.