Katie Kime Shows Us How She Made Her Awesome Lucite Tray
It’s clear that it’s amazing.
Some mood-board action!
Katie Kime knew she wanted to keep the production for her label in the U.S. She didn’t think to start the search in Austin, where the way-cute housewares designer is based, but through a guy who knew a guy, she struck gold—or at least lucite—in her own backyard. Here she shows us exactly how it all comes together for her Of a Kind edition. —olivia seely
“Step one of the manufacturing process begins with the cutting of the six lucite sheets required for each tray. These are cut using heavy machinery. As you can see in this picture, a worker runs each piece across the blade for the right measurement.”
“Step two is matching the edges of all six pieces of lucite precisely with the others and preparing for adhesion.”
“Step three is the most tedious part because if the glue runs even slightly at any of the seams, then the tray can’t be used. We found that using a syringe for the glue is the best way to ensure that the glue won’t spread. At each seam of the tray, we apply a thin line of glue before combining the pieces of lucite.”
“Step four is the drying. This takes 24 hours, and once that time has passed, we inspect them and get them back to my studio to finish assembly with the tray inserts.”
“The tray inserts are custom patterns I design based on inspiration from anywhere and everywhere—a vintage wallpaper from eBay, a fabric swatch, or, most often, patterns I see while traveling, like a Moroccan rug or a ceramic from Thailand. From a sketch or a rough rendering, a vector file is created of the pattern. From there, in Photoshop I paint with various color variations until I find the right combination.”
“That finalized file is then sent to printers and cutters and placed inside the tray…et voila!”
Get this guy first thing tomorrow! Click here to make sure it doesn’t pass you by.
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How Julianne Ahn Made Her Ceramic Of a Kind Edition
The heat is on.
Though she hasn’t been doing ceramics for that long—she’s only been at it since 2011—Object & Totem’s Julianne Ahn knows a thing or seven about wheel-throwing. Here’s a look at how she transforms an old lump o’ clay into an Of a Kind treasure. —olivia seely
“After you measure out a certain amount of clay, you wedge it to get rid of the air bubbles and then you throw it on the wheel and center it. This picture is a glop of clay being centered so it stays balanced in the middle of the vat. Each one has a bit of a nuance depending on what I’m focusing on, or what I’m listening to. But, for the most part, they’re all measured to the exact size. “
“When you finish a piece and it’s been trimmed and stamped and dries out, it’s called greenware. It shrinks a little bit after the moisture leaves the clay body. It’s still very fragile but easier to sand down if you need to edit any parts of it that are sharp.”
“Each kiln-firing goes for almost 24 hours. It takes about 12 hours to get to its peak temperature and then 12 hours to cool down fully. You have to fire it twice.”
“This is my glazing table where I glaze all of the bottles after they cool down. Glazing is like a monster on its own. You never know what’s going to happen, because there are so many variables.”
“I have a few different glazes that I work with. It’s interesting because you can glaze them all the same and they will all come out differently. It has to do with the foundation and its reaction to the glaze. It’s just a matter of brushing the glaze on really evenly and turning your hand. It’s obvious when it’s hand-painted versus dipped or poured.”
Out of the kiln the last time—ta-da!
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Sara Barner Crafts a Bag
Ok, let’s get down to business.
Since she started working in a leather shop part-time during college, accessories designer Sara Barner has learned all sorts of tricks. Two things you need to craft bags as lovely as hers? “Nice material will make a really big difference and…lots of patience,” she laughs, reflecting on how much time goes into making one of her killer creations. Below, she takes us through everything involved in crafting one of her most simple bags. —koun bae
“This leather is called English bridle, and it’s a vegetable-tanned leather that I get in the States. Right now, I work with three different kinds of leather. The bridle is a heavier, stiffer—it has a more raw quality to it. The bag I’m making for Of a Kind is lambskin, and that’s a really soft, thinner leather that needs to get lined. I don’t know the quality of a leather until I see it and feel it, so it’s a long process to find really nice leather to work with. Once I find it, I kind of stick with it.”
“I examine the skin and map out the pieces that I need to cut. There are scars and marks on the skin that I have to work around. I usually cut the leather with a rotary cutter.”
“The body of the bag is pieced out, and then I use the strap cutter for cutting the long pieces for the handles. That allows me to cut an even, straight piece.”
“I punch the holes for where the hand-stitching needs to happen on the handles.”
“And then I assemble the body of the bag and sew it with an industrial machine.”
“After the bag is all sewn together, I trim around the sewn edges with a rotary cutter, and then dye and polish the edges so that they have a dark, shiny finish. I do the same for the straps.”
“Once that happens, the handles get hand-stitched to the bag with a waxed linen thread. It’s pretty labor-intensive!”
“I don’t usually make one bag at a time, since it’s more efficient to make a few at a time, but one bag takes at least a few hours to make.”
The edition Sara made for us is coming in the morning! Don’t miss it…
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Rawaan Alkhatib Plays Scarf Show & Tell
A half dozen crazy-good creations.
“I started making scarves because I really like the idea of taking a flat surface that becomes more complex as your drape it. When you’re wearing a scarf, you never see the whole design—you have to conceive a fractured pattern, which is a lot like writing a poem,” explains Rawaan Alkhatib, who—what do you know?—has an MFA in poetry. Below, the very talented lady puts some of her design processes to words. —alisha prakash
“I doodle a lot at poetry readings—it helps me concentrate on what I’m hearing. Occasionally, I draw things that make their way into prints, like these guys, who became the Candyfighters.”
“The Dinoflowers print started out as two separate sets of drawings in my sketchbook—pen-and-ink dinosaurs and floral watercolors. I’d been thinking about how dumb it is that children’s stuff gets so gendered—dinosaurs and flowers are equally awesome—so I combined them digitally to make what I thought might be good wallpaper for a child’s bedroom. Then I decided that I wanted to wear it.”
“The Aliki scarf came straight from a painting I did of some flamingo feathers. It’s the most untouched of all the scarves—no digital messing around at all, just scanned.”
“Festina Lente was one of the first scarves I made. It was for my mum, who’s obsessed with turtles—our house in Dubai is filled with tiny turtle figurines. One day, my mum called to tell me that my dad had gone to the beach, and came across a dying sea turtle, whose shell was encrusted with something gross and hard. He brought it home, and they bought it an inflatable kiddie pool and brought buckets of seawater to fill up the pool every day. They fed him lettuce. They also picked all the parasites off the turtle’s shell, and named him Survivor. He died but lived six weeks longer than he would have on his own, so there’s that. It seemed worth commemorating somehow.”
“The flower print on the Floral Blizzard scarf is from a painted scrap that’s a couple of years old, but it was only a couple of months ago that I understood how to use it for this scarf. My personal crest should come with the motto ‘when in doubt, add polka dots.’”
“The cheetah was originally part of a series of paintings I started shortly before leaving Dubai for Iowa. I was going to poetry school, which freaked me out, and instead of spending the months leading up to it reading and writing, I spent them staying up until the wee hours of the morning obsessively painting tiny gouache animals. Also, this scarf for Of a Kind is on cotton, not silk—a departure from the norm. It’s much bigger than the scarves I usually make. It’s so cozy, all those cheetahs wrapped around you, protecting you. I wear mine pretty much every day.”
These cheetahs are coming for you! Get your limited-edition scarf NOW.
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Winifred Grace’s Partners in Mexico
Designed in Chicago, produced in Cuernavaca.
Until very recently, Winifred Grace and her assistant made every single piece in her just-tough jewelry line themselves. The trouble? Scaling. So, when she randomly read about a workshop in Cuernavaca, Mexico, that employed local women to make bronze jewelry, she got in touch ASAP. “When I got my first set of samples from the workshop it was like Christmas: Every piece was more beautiful than I could have even imagined,” she explains. Meet the south-of-the-border members of the Winifred Grace team. —raquel laneri
“This is Laura, the woman who founded the workshop. She is a descendant of Benjamin Franklin and President Roosevelt. She is from Arizona; her dad was in the civil service, and she traveled the world as a child. She works with a small group of local women who have never been able to earn a living for themselves, so she’s teaching them jewelry as a trade. It’s a way to empower these women so they can earn a higher income than they would working in the fields.”
“I design the pieces at home in Chicago and send sketches with specific measurements. We do a lot of emailing back and forth with pictures, and, once we hone in on the details, the workshop will create and send me a physical sample. Here, one of the women is soldering one of my ring designs.”
“Laura tells me that these girls have become her family. The funny thing is that after I went to study metalsmithing in San Miguel, Mexico, seven years ago, I left with this burning desire to start a workshop there with the local women. Now I’ve met Laura, and she’s done that exact thing, just in a different city.”
Get Winifred’s edition first thing tomorrow! Click this way to make sure you don’t miss it.
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The Sustainable Making of Our AILI Edition
It takes all sorts of thoughtfulness to make this necklace magic.
Monica Ruzansky is quick to name-check nature as a constant source of inspo for her daintily cool jewelry line AILI, and her earth-friendly approach to production completely backs it up. That means using environmentally friendly sourcing and working with people who are caring and meticulous about what they do. “There’s a lot of damage and waste in this world,” she says. “I want to do my part to repair that.” Here’s all the goodness that went into her Of a Kind piece. —mattie kahn
“I try to use recycled metals whenever I can. You know, because every little bit helps. It is important to me to do my best to be environmentally friendly. Once a piece is finished, I recycle my scrap, either by melting it down or reusing it in a new piece. And here’s a trick: In the studio, I keep different little cups marked with the different gold karats for all the dust filings. Over time, you can get a good amount of gold dust. It’s so precious. You don’t want to waste a thing.”
“Sustainability factors into design as well. The triangle shape of this piece symbolizes equality and balance. I use a lot of triangles in my work. I just think it’s a powerful shape. For me, it means stability and strength.”
“I don’t do casting or setting myself. I hand that job over to the professionals! The setters that I work with are a sweet family that I met through my studio mates. They’ve been in business for years, and they know exactly what they’re doing. It’s special to be able to know the faces of the people that work with you. They’re your community. The rubies that they set and that are used for the edition come from Thailand and are cut in Bangkok, where the government oversees the cutting process in order to keep working conditions good and wages fair.”
This killer necklace is available now! Just 20 in the whole wide world.
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How Lila Rice Crafted Her Of a Kind Earrings
These tiny little studs take some serious work.
The miniature masterpieces.
“What’s really cool to me about the process of making these studs is that none of the steps require tools that are new-fangled or high-tech whatsoever,” explains Lila Rice Marshall of her ah-mazing Of a Kind edition. “These are very old metalsmithing techniques—the whole shebang could be done without plugging anything in. I think it’s amazing that you can work with metal using just fire, files, hammers, a saw and some elbow grease.” Well, guess what? So do we. And we can’t wait for Lila to show us how it’s done. —alisha prakash
“This is a piece of double-clad, 14-karat gold-fill sheet. It’s 14-karat on both sides with a thin layer of brass in the middle—hence the gold filled with brass.”
“I heat the metal with my oxyacetylene torch in order to anneal it, before adding texture. This heats and softens the metal—the heat loosens the molecular bonds in the metal, allowing it to be worked or textured more easily. There is a moment while heating the metal that you can see it ‘relax.’ Pretty cool.”
“Here, I’m cleaning the metal in an acid bath, called ‘pickle,’ in order to remove oxidation caused by the extreme temps needed to solder metal.”
“My favorite tool—the rolling mill! Here, I pass the sheet metal through the mill with a piece of mesh to print the texture directly onto the metal. I love using the rolling mill to add texture to the metal because no two pieces are alike. In that way, it’s different than stamping.”
“After drawing on the shape, I cut the metal. I use bone-cutting shears, intended for the kitchen.”
“I use a sanding disc to remove sharp edges.”
“Ta-da! This is the blank—the shape to which the ear wire will be soldered—for the stud.”
“Here, I’m soldering on the 14-karat gold-fill ear wire.”
“Next, I use a cup bur to round the tip of the wire so it’s not sharp.”
“This is the polishing machine, for cleaning and getting a brushed finish.”
“And then into the tumbler it goes—it gets many thousands of tiny beatings from the little bits of steel for a final polish and to harden the metal.”
Lila’s creation is up for grabs now! Get these ah-maze earrings while you can.
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How Our Tirana Edition Came Together
The story (and people) behind the Victorian Governess Cuff.
The journey of one of Graciela Fuentes’s clock-gear necklaces and key rings doesn’t start and stop with her: The Brooklyn-based jeweler relies on a dedicated network of artisans along the way. Here’s a peek inside the who, what, and where of our so-rad edition. —jackie varriano
“My inspiration for this cuff is a pair of scissors from a Victorian doll house that I found in England. I started by working with a bunch of brass replicas of the original pair, bending them and soldering them together at different angles.”
“Once I’m satisfied with a composition, the metal is hammered into a cuff shape. The cuff and I then leave my Brooklyn studio and head to the Jewelry District in the center of Manhattan.”
“My first stop is the studio of Mr. Alex Pugachevsky, a hand-engraver who learned his trade from his brother at the age of 14 in his native Kiev. Alex used a microscope and his own handmade tools to engrave the word ‘Tirana’ on the inside of the cuff.”
“Next stop is Taba, a family-run, environmentally friendly company that makes a mold of the cuff and uses the ancient technique of lost wax to cast each piece using post-consumer recycled brass.”
“Waxes are delicately grouped together in trees from which a second mold is made. Molten, recycled brass is poured into this mold, which is then destroyed to get the pieces out after the metal hardens. The process was repeated seven times to make the cuffs for this edition.”
“Back in my studio, each cuff is lovingly inspected, cleaned, filed, and polished by me. Afterward, I head back to the Jewelry District to have each piece plated in gold by the expert father-and-son team at Europea Polishing. And voilà—the cuffs are ready!”
Score this baby now! While you can!
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Unearthen Gives Us a Ring
And a rundown of how it came to be.
Gia Bahm, the designer responsible for Unearthen’s sweetly tough jewelry, knew exactly what she wanted from her Of a Kind edition: a ring simple enough to be worn every day and special enough to make a statement. To satisfy the tall order, Gia employed a lost-wax casting process and handset each stone herself. “Computers and technology are great,” Gia says. “But I like that this is tangible. It means each ring turns out a little different. You can see someone’s fingerprints all over it.” Below, Gia breaks the whole thing down. —mattie kahn
“First, I’ll select the wax that I want to work with and carve it into the shape that I’m looking for for the ring with a wax pen. I use this very specific X-Acto knife. I’m pretty idiosyncratic about the tools that I like.”
“Next, a mold is made out of the wax model, so that we can cast as many editions from it as we need to.”
“After we cast an individual piece from the mold, we use a rock tumbler to polish it. In essence, it just cleans the piece up, gives it a nice finish, and softens any rough or pointed edges.”
“At this point, we match a crystal to each of the finished ring settings. For us, it’s not like we toss the whole batch into an assembly line and shove any stone into any frame. The fit has to be as seamless as possible, and each prong as to be adjusted accordingly. Nature made this amazing, unique thing, and I want to do it justice”
“We give it one last final polish, and that’s that. We send it off to you.”
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How Shana Tabor Made Her Of a Kind Cuff
Saw? Check. Torch? Check. Mallet? Check.
Shana Tabor, the totally rad designer behind the super-stylish line In God We Trust, first came up with the design for bracelet she made us as a token of appreciation for a friend, fittingly dubbing it the “thanks” cuff. What makes our version extra special? Red Swarovski crystals—boo-ya. Below, Shana talks us through the steps involved in making one of these bad boys at her Greenpoint, Brooklyn, studio, as Becca Mapes, IGWT’s very talented jewelry product manager, demonstrates. —alisha prakash
Get Shana’s cuff—that we may or may not be OBSESSED with—now.
“Saw a 12-inch brass rod in half. Each rod makes two cuffs.”
“Next, the brass is annealed using an acetylene torch. This allows the molecules in the metal to separate, making the metal softer and more malleable. The oxidation (a.k.a. blackness) made by annealing the metal is removed from the brass with something known as a pickle solution. The rods are then lightly sanded to remove any discoloration or dirt. The ends are filed and sanded until they are smooth enough to slide on and off the wrist.”
“Then we hand-forge the rods around a bracelet mandrel by hammering them repeatedly with a rawhide mallet.”
“The cuff begins to take shape after a lot of hard work.”
“More perfecting of the shape!”
“Once the cuff is shaped, it is hammered on a steel block to give it a textured finish.”
“These awesome opaque red stones—Swarovski crystals, made in Austria—are then set into the ends of the cuff.”
“After some final finishing and polishing, voila!”
