Mission Jewelry Atelier Now Sparkles Online

 

Pinterest addicts, watch out. Under-the-radar Mission jewelry atelier Love & Luxe has a new web site stocked with oh-so-pinnable pics featuring its collection of jewelry by independent designers, metalsmiths and fine artists – all curated by resident artist and owner Betsy Barron.

Don’t see what you’re looking for? Don’t worry, you won’t have to head to a big box jewelry just yet. The Love & Luxe store is also a working studio with a trained staff and plenty of artist connects to help you design custom wedding and commitment bands, necklaces, earrings, rings and bracelets.

Sure, look online, but there are many reasons to visit the Mission store’s stunning collection in person: pieces are thoughtfully arranged in glass-topped displays to emphasize the importance of each piece’s unique qualities so, says Barron, “customers can enjoy the experience of discovery.”

So what will they discover?

“When looking for new collections, design and craftsmanship are taken equally into consideration so that we can offer jewelry that will become part of a life long collection, making careful use of the earth’s natural resources,” says Barron of the store’s selection process.

Precious object seekers, browse away online or at Love & Luxe, 1169 Valencia Street, SF.

love & luxe store

More San Francisco boutiques

Photography courtesy of Love & Luxe

Snap Judgment: Silver Ear Threads

Bar None ear threads by San Francisco's Enflux

Our very-visual, (almost) chatter-free snap judgment of the day: the super lightweight and low maintenance glam of the sterling silver Bar None ear threads, $15, by San Francisco-based jewelry designer Enflux. (Perhaps) even better: these simple style-helpers are priced right in line with our post-holiday budgets.

More snap judgments

 

Don’t Call it ‘Frisco: Meagan Reelitz’s Prize-Winning Ring

Diamonds Are in the Cracks Ring by Meagan Reelitz

Oakland jewelry designer Meagan Reelitz

Finding beauty in life’s rough spots never fails to impress. And so much the better if that beauty happens to involve diamonds and San Francisco. That’s just what you’ll find sparkling away in Oakland designer Meagan Reelitz‘s Diamonds Are in the Cracks ring, the grand prize winner in the Jewelry Artisan’s Collective 2011 Design Challenge. The most recent installment of the annual jewelry challenge asked designers to create work inspired by the San Francisco experience and the theme, “Don’t Call it ‘Frisco.”

Using earthquakes as her starting point (and that’s about as real-deal San Francisco as it gets), Reelitz created a piece with both style and historical substance.

“I took the seismographic report from the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake and altered it to fit nicely on a ring band of sterling silver. I then hand-sawed the report into the band. I set 5 diamonds within the cracks,” Reelitz says of her process.

Stay tuned for news of Reelitz’s upcoming exhibition at Maiden Lane’s Manika Jewelry.

 More San Francisco fashion news

Shacking Up: Rare Device + Little Otsu = Cool, New Space

News from San Francisco’s only design store with a name torn from the pages of Coleridge’s Kubla Khan: Rare Device is leaving Market Street for a bigger and better space on Divisadero, where it will partner up with onetime Mission paper goods shop Little Otsu. The planned relocation is set to take place in early March.

Specializing in design-conscious gifts, home accessories, art objects, jewelry and wearables, the new collaborative shop will include a Little Otsu mini store stocked with a full line of publishing products, as well as selected crafts and goods. This is the first time Portland-based, Little Otsu will be available in San Francisco since the closure of their Valencia Street store over a year ago.

Rare Device is currently located on 1845 Market Street and promotes a variety of designers who create modern, handmade, and beautifully-designed goods. We can’t wait to see the new and improved space in the Western Addition neighborhood at 600 Divisidero Street (at Hayes).

Photography courtesy of Rare Device

Cute Underthings for Cold Chicks: Snoa Lingerie (Plus, It’s Eco!)

There’s a reason hot and sexy often end up in the same sentence and frigid bitches in the literal sense have a tendency to act, well, like frigid bitches in the figurative sense. It’s the same reason goosebumping it up in lingerie is a fate most of us leave to models, who get paid to do things like that. Bringing a sweatpant alternative to your next close encounter of the winter kind is Snoa Lingerie, a local company whose sleep and loungewear aims to offer warmth alongside sex appeal.

Billed as “sexy sleepwear for chilly nights,” the line from Anh Oppenheimer, a documentary filmmaker who realized the need for the line when she found herself donning a negligee and socks, and California College of the Arts fashion design instructor Susan Robinson ranges from long underwear-inspired basics to signature items that includes a bell-sleeved nightie with a plunging neckline, a spaghetti strapped red chemise and a bamboo fleece shrug for covering up exposed arms without going the big, schlumpy dad sweater route (you know you’ve done it). Decidedly on the ladylike end of the demure to sizzling hot spectrum, the line strikes us as more every-night wear than let’s-rekindle-that-old-dead-fire fodder. But that’s fine by us (besides, isn’t it what happens on your average ‘ole night that really counts?).

Pieces are made using double layers of fabric for added warmth, and a focus on eco-friendly materials means fabrics like silk hemp, modal and wool jersey, as well as local production at a facility in San Francisco.

“It seemed the most eco friendly thing to do,” says Oppenheimer of the choice to manufacture close to home. “No ships, no trucks. Also, we could make sure that the facility is a fair one in terms of wages and conditions….I can shake the hand of the woman running the shop, we can take one garment back if there’s a few errant stitches and they’ll fix it up for us quickly. It’s a good feeling.”

To see Snoa in person, you’ll find a few pieces available at Workshop on Union Street, and you can warm up to the full line in the online shop.

Photography courtesy of Jan Hammock for Snoa Lingerie