JEWELRY DESIGNERS AT ALARA | ARTISANAl & ETHICAL BY DESIGN

When people ask us how we choose who's in this gallery, the honest answer is: slowly, and with a lot of opinions. Over 22 years, Alara has built relationships with more than 80 independent artisanal designers — a mix of internationally recognized names and craftspeople you may not have discovered yet. Read more...

MORE ABOUT THE DESIGNERS BEHIND THE WORK

What they share isn't a "house style." It's a commitment to making things that couldn't come off an assembly line, sourcing materials they'd be willing to account for, and caring enough about their craft to keep evolving it. That last part about evolving matters to us as much as the first two.

The contemporary jewelry designers we carry aren't coasting on a signature look. They're working jewelers, bench jewelers, graduate gemologists, painters-turned-metalworkers, engineers who got distracted by gold, and multi-generational families who have been making fine jewelry since before most of us were born. This page is your map to all of them.

A Few We'd Like to Introduce (or Reintroduce)

Pyrrha Jewelry

In 1993, Danielle and Wade Papin were making jewelry at their kitchen table in Vancouver. Two years later, after discovering a box of Victorian-era wax seals at an estate sale, Pyrrha was born. Each talisman in their collection is cast from authentic 18th- and 19th-century wax impressions sourced from flea markets and auctions around the world — reclaimed sterling silver, bronze, and 14K gold, handcrafted from start to finish in their certified Zero Carbon Vancouver studio. The result is symbolic jewelry that people wear because it actually means something to them, not because a trend told them to.

Lashbrook

Lashbrook is the reason grooms stop scrolling. Founded in Utah in 2000 by Eric Laker, whose great-great-grandfather pushed a handcart across the Great Plains, Lashbrook designs and manufactures every ring in-house — titanium, Damascus steel, carbon fiber, meteorite, hardwood, cobalt chrome, and combinations of all of the above. The customization options are genuinely staggering. If you're shopping for a men's band and you want something that doesn't look like every other men's band, this is the place to start.

Eva Stone

EvaStone is a design collaboration born in Gdańsk, Poland, grounded in that city's deep tradition of metalsmithing and jewelry-making. Artists Rafał and Ewa Szyszko work from the conviction that "beauty is the only form of perfection available to us," and their pieces reflect it: one-of-a-kind gemstones, mixed precious metals, hand-picked stones, and a singular talisman-like aesthetic that is both contemporary and, frankly, hard to categorize. Their combination of granulation, 3D design, and richly textured silver surfaces puts them in a category of their own. And in a commonly recurring theme at Alara, the Alara Team has had the pleasure of meeting, sharing, and supping with Ewa and Rafael at international gem shows.

Aaron Henry

Another personal friend of Babs and Alara at large, Aaron Furlong is the third generation in a family of jewelers and diamond merchants tracing back to 1940, and the GIA graduate gemologist behind Aaron Henry Designs. Based in California, he produces only a couple hundred pieces a year — all assembled, set, and polished by hand in platinum and 18K or 19K gold, with every diamond graded personally for color, clarity, and cut. The design vocabulary is organic and understated, drawing from natural forms and his travels through Japan, Montana, and Arizona. His work has appeared in Vanity Fair, Town & Country, and InStyle; the Gemological Institute of America has used it in its own marketing. Nature-inspired fine jewelry with American luxury craftsmanship, responsibly sourced from the ground up.

Adel Chefridi

Adel Chefridi grew up in Carthage-Tunis, a city layered with Phoenician, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Andalusian, and Ottoman history. He came to New York in 1998, taught himself jewelry-making, and refined his craft at GIA and the Studio Jewelers School. His signature design elements — engraved dot motifs, moonstones, sapphires, tourmalines, the balancing act between simplicity and movement — are drawn directly from that multicultural background. His studio in Rhinebeck, New York, and his sister studio in Tunis (run by his two nieces) use hand-selected natural gemstones and recycled metals from ethical suppliers. Transparency about sourcing isn't marketing copy for Adel; he supports the Mercury Free Mining Initiative and 350.org. This is the kind of fine jewelry that gets better the more you know about it. Alara loves all the members of the "Chefridi Family," and always looks forward to meeting up with them in person.

Sarah Graham

Sarah Graham's pieces are immediately recognizable and basically impossible to mistake for anyone else's: organic shapes drawn from microscopic organisms, rotting tree wood, and natural texture, executed in the starkest possible juxtaposition — matte black oxidized cobalt chrome and 18K gold. Bold and strong, but balanced by softness. The combination of blackened steel and warm gold is her signature, and it's been since she branched out on her own in 2000 after a two-year apprenticeship under a master goldsmith. Her work is made in the USA, and her line names — Manzanita, Pebbles, Oyster, Conifer, Bamboo — tell you exactly where she's drawing from. Sarah Graham is one of those designers whose jewelry looks like a photograph of it doesn't quite do it justice. One could say that Babs and Sarah "grew up together" in the jewelry business...Sarah was relatively new to the industry when Babs was choosing her first designers to represent at her Denver gallery oh-so-long-ago!

Serafino Consoli

Serafino Consoli has been making fine jewelry in Bergamo, Italy since 1959. The name of their flagship collection, Brevetto — Italian for "patent" — tells you most of what you need to know: after ten years of development, the brand earned multiple international patents for rings that expand up to ten sizes and can be worn as bracelets, all without a single spring. Each piece requires up to 42,000 solder points and nearly 1,000 individual components, all in 18K gold, diamonds, and gemstones. The technology is extraordinary. The jewelry is also simply beautiful. This is the collection that solves the problem of large knuckles, fluctuating ring sizes, and the question of what to give someone when you don't know their size. For those at Alara who had the privilege of meeting Ivan Consoli, we loved him and were so saddened by his passing. Thankfully, his foresight led to the securing of the firm's legacy based on these amazing marvels of jewelry technology.

Alex Monroe Jewelry

Alex Monroe grew up in 1970s Suffolk, England — an old, crumbling house, tangled fields, rivers, forests, and an imagination fueled by constant outdoor roaming. He moved to London intending to be a punk. He became a jeweler instead. Every piece in his collection is designed and handmade in his London studio using traditional techniques and Fairmined gold, and the subject matter reflects exactly where it came from: bumblebees, botanical motifs, feathers, birds, crabs, dragonflies, and the kind of detail that rewards close looking. Alex Monroe has been designing since 1987, and his work is as recognizable now as it was when he started. One of the most beloved contemporary jewelry designers working in the UK.

Alex Sepkus Jewelry

Alex Sepkus was born in Vilnius, Lithuania, where his father was an architect and his grandfather a painter. He came to the United States in 1988, settled in New York, and spent the next several decades building a body of work that jewelry people describe as Byzantine, medieval, Klimt-adjacent, and unlike anything else — often all in the same sentence. He worked under microscopes. He made his own tools. His pieces are 18K gold and platinum, set with rainbow-hued gemstones and diamonds, alive with microscopic textures and patterns that take days to execute. He passed away in 2021, leaving behind a design archive and a team of goldsmiths who have worked with him for decades. Babs is among the lucky few jewelers who ever has had an actual conversation with the painfully introverted Alex Sepkus, and will treasure always his kind words.

Alara has the distinction of having collaborated with Alex Sepkus on a series of designs incorporating Yogo sapphires and Montana sapphires — making us the first and only jeweler to carry his work with these stones. If you're looking for what "jeweler's jewelry" actually means, Alex Sepkus is a strong argument.

Erika Winters

Erika Winters came to jewelry design through theater and dance, then a diamond engagement ring from her now-husband, then a GIA graduate gemologist degree, and a first collection in 2013 that launched her as one of the most admired contemporary jewelry designers in the bridal world. Her signature is balance: old-world and new, antique diamond cuts paired with 18K gold and a softly textured finish that evokes decades of wear. Her collections are handcrafted in Seattle, Washington. Many of the rings available at Alara feature Montana sapphires hand-selected from our own collection. A designer with a photographer's eye, a maker's hands, and a clear point of view about what fine jewelry is for.

Todd Pownell (TAP Studio)

Todd Pownell is a technically trained goldsmith and graduate gemologist based in Cleveland, Ohio, who makes jewelry with his partner Debra Rosen and a small, tight team. TAP Studio's root aesthetic is a romantic celebration of natural elements — dark metals, rugged surfaces, the materiality of light. His signature is the inverted or "upside-down" diamond, set to catch light at unexpected, oblique angles. Every piece is entirely hand-fabricated using only ethically mined and recycled materials; Pownell is a member of Ethical Metalsmiths and runs his studio on green practices. TAP jewelry is for people who want fine work with integrity behind it, not just on top of it.

Morgaine Faye

Morgaine Faye holds a BFA in Illustration, has been showing paintings and sculptures in galleries since 2010, and makes every piece of her jewelry by hand in Portland, Oregon — design, fabrication, stone-setting, hand-engraving, all of it. Her Armory Collection draws directly from medieval arms and armor: sculptural, hand-engraved rings and pendants with a substantial, androgynous aesthetic that has nothing to do with the mainstream fine jewelry conversation. Her visual language combines natural elements, historical objects, commanding figures, and a rebellious intelligence that she describes as "a way to challenge and converse with the world through personal symbols and iconography." Not for everyone. Absolutely for someone.

Pieces of Starr

Starr Miller is the sole artist behind Pieces of Starr, making every piece herself in Atlanta — design, stone setting, and hand-engraving included. Her journey into jewelry started with a Metals 101 class in 2013; it led her to master stone setters in Antwerp, to wax carving courses with Kate Wolf, to engraving under Alexandr Sidorov. Her work is defined by weighty gold silhouettes, celestial engravings — crescent moons, stars, planets — and richly colored gemstones, all executed with the kind of technical precision that comes from genuinely loving the craft. "In a world that tells us to make more, I just want to make better." That's the whole operating philosophy.

Rene Escobar Jewelry

Rene Escobar is a third-generation goldsmith and designer based in Miami, Florida. He got his first position as a jeweler at seventeen. His collections are made in his South Florida studio using recycled precious metals and responsibly sourced gemstones, combining traditional and cutting-edge techniques, and they are always evolving. He trained each of his artisans the way his father trained him. The commitment to authenticity, originality, and the art of handmade jewelry is genuinely baked in — not a tagline.

Atelier Narce (Iohann Pita)

Iohann Pita's Atelier Narce collection is handcrafted from impressions of ancient Near Eastern seals and 18th- and 19th-century renderings of classical antiquity. His inspiration comes from the works themselves, and from great works of literature — most recently Marcel Proust, in his Gold of Memories collection. Sapphires, diamonds, faces peering from glimmering metal: this is jewelry as an archaeology of personal memory. Modern and wearable, and yet, as Pita puts it, "transcending time and civilization." One of the more unexpected designers in the Alara collection, and one of the most rewarding to discover.

Le Conte Jewelry (Eunmi Han)

Eunmi Han trained at Seoul National University of Science and Technology and earned her MFA in Metals and Jewelry Design from the Rochester Institute of Technology. She designs and makes Le Conte Jewelry by hand in Los Angeles, drawing directly from fine art techniques — her Sgraffito collection uses the scratching technique from ceramics and painting; her Pasto collection translates the thick, textured brushstrokes of oil painting into gold and gemstones. The result is what Alara calls jewelry for art lovers: not jewelry inspired by art in a vague way, but jewelry that is a direct application of specific painting and craft techniques to metal. Each piece carries a narrative. Art history as jewelry, made by someone who knows both.

Studio 311

Studio 311 has been helping people find the right rings since the early 1970s. Founded by Katherine, the line is carried forward today by Eric and Krista McCafferty, who work closely with her to preserve the original spirit of the work. Designs reflect a deep respect for art and culture: tapestry borders, Art Nouveau illustrations, Japanese prints, Impressionist paintings. High quality, unique, refined, and consistently recognizable — hand-crafted in precious metals and stones in their Oregon studio. This is fine jewelry for people who wear it as an expression of genuine aesthetic sensibility.

Toby Pomeroy

Toby Pomeroy grew up in India, where he developed a commitment to life in balance that shapes everything his studio does. In 2006, while fly fishing on an Oregon coastal river, he made a decision: he would ask his refiner to purify previously used gold and silver separately from newly mined metals and use only those reclaimed materials in his jewelry. The resulting EcoGold and EcoSilver were named "the new gold standard" by TIME magazine. His studio in Corvallis, Oregon, hand-forges nature-inspired pieces with matte finishes and soft, feminine silhouettes in reclaimed and Fairmined-certified metals. He is also the founder of Mercury Free Mining, a non-profit dedicated to eliminating toxic mercury from gold extraction globally. When we say ethical and sustainable jewelry, Toby Pomeroy is one of the original definitions of that phrase.

Atelier Zobel (Peter Schmid)

Peter Schmid trained as a goldsmith and jewelry designer in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany, came to Konstanz in 1995 to apprentice under the legendary Michael Zobel, and never left. He took over Atelier Zobel in 2005 and has built it into one of the most distinctive fine jewelry studios in Europe. His jewelry is one-of-a-kind art: painterly surface textures, contrasts between rough gems and precious metals, organic structures alongside precise geometry, platinum and gold combined in ways that require exceptional technical mastery. Around 80% of the metals used are recycled. "Extraordinary jewelry for extraordinary people" is the studio motto — and it's not modesty, it's a point of view. If you're a collector, or if you've been looking for the kind of fine jewelry that makes other fine jewelry feel generic, start here.

Kima Jewelry (Isabel Dennis)

Isabel Dennis is the fine jeweler behind Kima, based in Oakland, California. She trained under master diamond setter Alexandr Sidorov in Antwerp, Belgium, and specializes in traditional pavé, wax carving, and diamond setting. Every piece is hand-cut and set in-house, using old-world metalsmithing techniques alongside microscopes and pneumatic engraving machines. Her work marries those classical techniques with a deliberately contemporary and sometimes challenging design sensibility. This is jewelry made by someone who is consciously trying to advance her craft with every piece she makes.

What All of This Has in Common

You've noticed by now that this list spans quite a lot of territory — talisman pendants from Vancouver, men's bands with meteorite inlay from Utah, art jewelry from Lake Constance, celestial gold rings from Atlanta, expandable Italian rings that become bracelets. That breadth is by design.

Alara's criteria for carrying a designer have always been the same: the work has to be genuinely original, technically well-executed, and sourced in a way we're willing to stand behind. Recycled precious metals, responsibly sourced gemstones, no inventory made in countries that turn a blind eye to child labor — these aren't new commitments for us. They're 22 years old.

What makes this a collection of contemporary jewelry designers rather than a catalog is the curatorial choice behind it. These are not the same designers you'll find at every fine jewelry gallery. Many of them are female jewelry designers and independently operating jewelers who make small batches or one-of-a-kind pieces. Many are the only people in the world making exactly what they make. The gallery on this page is our best current thinking about what exceptional artisanal fine jewelry looks like — and it's always evolving.