Me and my Shop
After a few years of wearing my grandmothers original 1964 Towle Sterling ring I gained a huge interest in Spoon rings and the Towle Sterling co. The Towle factory was a local factory back in the day when my grandparents and parents were younger. I started collecting spoon ring from Towle and the Twelve days of Christmas pendants. On my 21st Birthday we got up early and went to a local Antique flea market that my sister and I love to go to find fun antique jewelry. That day I found a Towle fork that had been made into a bracelet. Excited, I went and show my dad. He said "oh, that reminds me, come down stairs." So i followed him down, and out of his safe, he pulled a little battered brown box and gave it to me. He said his friend worked at the Towel factory when they were young and he got a discount. He had got a cuff bracelet from him, and decided at the time he would hide it away so maybe someday he would have a daughter he could give it to on her 21st Birthday. Well that was me, and he kept it all those years hidden away. He was only a 14 years old boy at the time. After that I was on a mission to find the matching spoon ring to by beautiful bracelet, and i found it on Etsy.
One day my sister was at that flea market we go to and found a sterling fork that she liked the pattern. She asked me if I could try to make it into a ring for her instead of buying a spoon ring already made. So I did and it came out to be what I thought was awesome. Looking back at it now it is not very round at all.
So from then on we started attending our local flea market every weekend to find beautiful forks and spoons to make rings out of. My first weekend at the flea market I found five pieces of flatware. I had no shop, no equipment, nothing. I had some hand me down tools and a basement with a work bench. I went in my basement and started trying to make more rings. I wrecked all of them. I was so frustrated to think that the first one had been so easy why the heck wasn't it working out know. So I went back to the flea market the next weekend and found five more pieces of flatware. I tried again, wrecked three of them. I am the person who has to live and learn. I couldn't watch someone else I had to figure out the knacks and the kinks myself. so I kept playing. I didn't want to give up because I had made one ring, I knew I could make another. I continued to go to the flea market on weekends and collected the rings I thought may be easier to work with. I started separating out the ones that may be thicker or harder to make into rings for when I hopefully wasn't a rookie anymore. I slowly started collecting more tools that would be helpful. Things got easier as time went on because I didn't want to give up. I came up with a design for a tool to help make this process easier. My family helped me create this tool so that I can make perfectly round rings.
I decided to open a shop on Etsy figuring that it might be fun to sell them to others, thats where this wonderful journey began. Etsy opened doors for me that I never thought would be. I sold my first spoon ring within a few days of posting it. This for me was the most exciting thing because I thought maybe I would sell one a month. I slowly collected and made more and more, as well as collecting more tools that would be helpful. It got tough doing it part time, I was getting very focused on the passion I have working with silver and less on my other job. at the beginning of the summer of 2015 I decided to sign up for as many shows that I could handle, not knowing that this would lead to no time for my other desk job. I decided to venture on my own so all my time could be focused on what I love to do and so far it was the best decision I could have made.
The thing about spoon rings that I think is so cool is that these vintage spoons I find have been used for years, people would enjoy bringing out there fine silver for dinner parties and such. Its not like that anymore, most of these beautiful pieces are scattered and hidden off in a drawer or a chest somewhere no one can see it. So i figure, why not wear it!
Another cute fact about spoon rings that makes my heart melt... In the 1600s in England servants would steal silver spoons from their masters’ homes and make them into rings due to not being able to buy rings for their loves. How cute for those men to be able to propose with a beautiful spoon ring made of sterling even as poor as they were.
