Jewelry designer Elizabeth Martin’s home looks like one of her pieces come to life.
The house is minimalist and modern. The long glass windows, the marble countertops and the Shou Sugi Ban (torched cypress wood) walls all look inspired by Martin’s jewelry designs, or vice versa.
She even used leftover wood from the walls in a few jewelry pieces.
Working with the wood was a challenge, the designer says, because she has no woodworking tools. Instead, she hand-sawed pieces to incorporate them into designs.
The experiment worked—all of the Shou Sugi Ban pieces on her Etsy page have sold. Her designs have found popularity on the online market, where she says she has customers across the United States and 15 different countries.
Today, Martin sits on her neutral-colored couch, soft jazz music playing in the background. Dressed in a casual ensemble of yoga pants and T-shirt, she jokes she should be more dressed up. But this is her “normal uniform for working,” she says—comfort is her first priority when jewelry-making as the materials she works with sometimes require using heavy tools.
“I like to work with materials that aren’t necessarily mainstream,” she says. She uses everything from wood and concrete to leather and cork—and even more unexpected items, such as Legos.
The name of Martin’s business, Firefly, comes from “finding light in the darkness.” She started designing in 2013 after struggling with multiple family issues at once. While she was working as a district manager for a pharmaceutical company, her mom suffered a heart attack and stroke. She tried to balance work and caring for her mom, who lived an hour away, but it proved difficult and she soon retired to focus on family.
About a month and a half later, her mom passed away. Two weeks after that, her son was diagnosed with cancer.
The designer’s jewelry pays homage to her mom, but also her dad. She gets her creative side from her mom, who painted, sculpted and drew. From her dad, she channels her inner handyman, using different tools and molds to shape the jewelry.
For Martin, design became a therapeutic outlet amidst the hardships.
“I yearned to be more creative or do more creative things, so it just seemed like the right time,” she says.
All of Martin’s designs have clean lines and neutral shades. Scrolling through her Etsy page, you’ll find circle-shaped concrete necklaces hanging from brass chains. Some of the concrete is fashioned to look like marble; other pieces are solid gray.
“I really tend to like clean, minimal, geometric designs more than anything else,” she says.
While the designer is primarily working with her concrete pieces now, she originally started designing jewelry and accessories with Legos, including Lego cufflinks.
These Lego pieces are still available on her Etsy page, along with cork or leather bracelets.
Using such unique materials means her designs take a lot of trial and error, Martin says. It requires her to keep on hand different tools, such as sandblasting equipment and a drill press, in addition to the usual jewelry-making necessities. The designer makes her own silicone molds to create unique shapes, as well.
While she designs some of her pieces from home, she also has a studio space at N The Art Space on Jefferson Highway.
Martin takes classes to learn whatever she can about different materials. She’s previously taken metalworking classes and various online courses.
Right now, she’s learning about 3-D printing and origami shapes. She’s managed to turn a paper origami design into a 3-D printed piece, and her next step is to see how the origami shape can be transferred to concrete.
“Sometimes it’s just putting things together,” Martin says about finding inspiration. “Sometimes I’ll draw. Sometimes I’ll look around at other things, and they give me an idea.”
FIND FIREFLY JEWELRY
Elizabeth Martin’s jewelry pieces are available at etsy.com/shop/MyOMyFirefly. Locals can find the jewelry at various events around the city, including the Baton Rouge Arts Market the first Saturday of every month.
This story was originally published in the October issue of 225 Magazine.
