I was born in rural Virginia. At 8, I moved with my family to the remote Quaker community of Monteverde in the tropical mountains of Costa Rica. There we walked barefoot to school, hauled goods and people on horseback, and thought nothing of cooking dinner on a wood stove when the erratic electric power was out. Life included pie socials, building bees, few cars, no TV, and Christmas gifts made by hand. If things broke, you fixed them, if you needed something you didn’t have, you created it out of what you did have or did without it. From this up bringing I inherited a delight in the engineering puzzles of inventing and building, and an easy patience with the general processes of making things.
Growing up, my hands were always busy with embroidery, crocheting, weaving, and other fiber arts, but I only discovered metal work and jewelry when I moved to Seattle, Washington in 1996. Early in my experiments with metal I gravitated to chains — an appealing transformation of stiff, unruly wire into flexible structures of satisfying weight. The manual dexterity gained from decades of handwork and needlework served me well, and translated neatly to working at a jewelry scale.
I still live in Seattle, making jewelry, and teaching jewelry making classes.
Want to see some pictures of my work? Check out my jewelry web site at:
www.julialowther.com
