'Storied' Jewelry at Southbury Shop

The jewelry emporium on Southbury's main shopping street carries the work of about 20 local jewelry makers, as well as a make-it-yourself bead bar, complimentary coffee, tea and cappuccino and an array of gourmet sweets for sale.
The shop, which opened Oct. 13, is the brainchild of jewelry maker Laura Vhay, who dreamed of having a place to showcase her work and the work of other artists she admired. It's also a place for friends to congregate and shop, sip or have a jewelry-making party that can be customized to suit girls, women, birthdays, bridal parties or other occasions. Mrs. Vhay hopes to begin hosting and teaching jewelry making classes soon and she is also renting formal jewelry for events and repairing and reworking existing pieces.
The Jewelry Café is a great place to shop for gifts because items can be found in all different styles and price points. Simple twisted wire rings featuring a single stone sell for about $15 and are perfect for teenagers; beaded bookmarks sell for $7 and would please a reader who doesn't love jewels; printed handbags trimmed in grosgrain ribbon are ideal for preppy styles and cost $40, and ornate enameled pieces suited to significant gift-giving occasions cost approximately $400-they are the most expensive items in the store. Purchases are wrapped and topped with a handmade truffle or gourmet cookie.
Mrs. Vhay is a tireless curator of jewelry, working to ensure that her artists are given an equal opportunity to sell pieces and that the jewelers she represents don't overlap too much in what they create. She has everything from delicate pieces molded from twigs and leaves to conservative pearl items to
organic-looking hammered silver hoops and cuffs. In the first week she was open, she was proud to report that all of her artists made sales.
The idea of people connecting, whether bringing together friends to create jewelry or connecting artisans with customers who love their work, seems as important to the shop owner as moving merchandise. She talks about her jewelers as friends and her logo features a cartoon of two women smiling and chatting over coffee at a cafe table.
With her shop, Mrs. Vhay hopes "to provide a conduit between the arts community and consumers in the Litchfield County area, whereby artists can build their business and consumers can reap the benefits of enjoying a handmade, often one-of-a-kind piece at reasonable prices with the added knowledge they are made right here in New England," according to her mission statement.
Though her store just opened a few weeks ago, Mrs. Vhay is no stranger to retail. She owned a similar business, Lulu Belle Gallery, in Monroe that represented all kinds of crafters, for several years in the 1990s.
The Jewelry Cafe is selling the work of about 20 jewelers but Mrs. Vhay intends to recruit about 15 more artisans. Those currently being carried in the shop include Angie Atkins, who crafts luminescent pieces with chips of ancient Roman glass; the KATYA line designed by two self-described "Baltic babes" who specialize in amber, amethyst, lapis lazuli, garnet, onyx and jade pieces; Eileen Clark's Odonata Jewelry featuring pieces of natural sea glass she finds on the Long Island Sound beaches near her Guilford home; Keith Lewis's line of wearable kinetic-sculpture earrings; Dragonfly Jewelry by Karen Zaorsky of Wolcott who uses Balinese silver, hand-torched lampwork glass, beads and found objects to create her line; Marcia Moore's intricate woven bead pieces; Soppas, the brainchild of Middletown metalsmith Denise DeStefano and Moodus artist Lisa Cassella, who together produce hammered metal items, and Kaitlin Stumpf, the youngest artist in the collective at a scant 7 years old, who creates the aforementioned bookmarks.
Mrs. Vhay loves to tell the backgrounds of her artists with shoppers and seems well-versed with each creator. "Everybody has a story, and those stories are what make it different here-it's what sells things," she said of the connection people can make by actually picturing a local person searching for sea glass on a nearby beach and lovingly crafting a trinket from it that can find its way into a shopper's hands.
Jewelry becomes a social as well as fashion endeavor in Mrs. Vhay's hands. "The idea for this store came from my experiences as a crafter and a consumer. I looked at the idea for the store and talked to a lot of women. Initially, I was going to open a place for just my work, as an artist, but try to find a rent that has parking and isn't in the back somewhere... . So, I thought of doing this. I saw so many jewelers that I loved, I just thought, 'What if there was a place where you could go, get good jewelry by local people and it was sold at reasonable prices?'" she thought.
She likens her store more to an ongoing craft fair than to other retail outlets where markups are often 50 percent or more. "Here you are buying directly from the artist," she said of the rent-share situation where she collects a small rent from each jeweler and they keep 90 percent of their selling prices.
Southbury seemed the perfect location for her intriguing shop "because it's arts-oriented and lots of people come here," she said. What she offers the artists is the opportunity to be seen by passers-by daily and that she acts as their representative. "The idea was to have a place where women can relax, sit down, have tea or coffee and not feel hurried-I want people to feel comfortable with no one hovering over them," she said.
Source: zwire