Designer History: Sarah Cavender

For new jewelry by Sarah Cavender, please visit her own website: shopsarahcavender dot com: "Sarah Cavender designs and produces several new seasonal collections each year.  We specialize in metal mesh jewelry, belts and handbags.  Each piece is handmade to order by local jewelry artisans under Sarah's supervision in Oxford, Alabama, using materials made primarily in the USA with stones imported from Europe.
 
"Sarah discovered the beauty and versatility of bronze screening and other wire materials while studying at the Philadelphia College of Art where she majored in sculpture.  After graduating in 1984, she remained in Philadelphia and applied her skills and understanding of metal to develop a process of forming these materials into wonderful floral, leaf and insect representations as well as abstract form.  
Sarah looks to her extensive world travel experiences for inspiration.  Her knowledge of art history and design influence her varied design approach.  Constantly in search of uncommon and unique materials, Sarah Cavender maintains a design criteria in which each piece contains an element of woven wire.  In this philosophy she continues to consistently produce a line of jewelry, belts, and handbags that are truly beautiful to wear and admire as objects of art."
shopsarahcavender.com/about-us

arlettegold.com tells us: "Based in Oxford, Alabama, Jewelry designer Sarah Cavender creates striking metal mesh bracelets and necklaces from a delicate fabric of mesh and wire that is both vintage and industrial looking. They’re sophisticated, versatile and timeless.

Sarah studied at the Philadelphia College of Art.  She majored in sculpture but took a jewelry class and discovered that she enjoyed working with metal.  Sarah found a screening manufacturer who sold flexible industrial metal mesh and “started scavenging in their scraps.”  She still sources much of her material from this company now. 

Upon graduating a sculpture professor told her she had a talent for jewelry design, inspiring her to start her business, supporting herself financially by cleaning houses and offices, and working in an art gallery.

Her conviction that "people buy a lot more jewelry than they do sculpture," proved correct, and today, Sarah Cavender Metalworks is a physical store in Oxford,  Alabama.  Sarah works at the back of her shop, with a small staff of local painters and metalworkers, crafting her designs. 

She cites fashion, a love of nature, gardening, and vintage jewelry among her inspirations.  Her father had a job in the Air Force, and her consequent childhood travels around the globe have been a huge influence on her.  “I was dragged into every museum en route,” she says.  It is, however, the materials that she works with – their capabilities and possibilities - which provide the main energy behind her designs.
Sarah will only work with materials that contain an element of woven wire, sourced primarily in the US.  Products are made from metal sheets of screenings and mesh which are hammered, formed, soldered, cleaned and plated or oxidized. They are then hand painted using Sarah’s own technique: colors are mixed by hand with tints and bronze powders into a lacquer coating, and sealed.

Sarah Cavender bracelets and chains are beautifully textured, in classic colors – they’re wearable art that will outlast any fashion trend."

https://arlettegold.com/collections/sarah-cavender