Mary's Hands Jewelry - Closed
Necessity is the mother of invention. Sometimes, it’s also the mother of hustles. After Mary Wormworth was laid off from her job as an airline reservation agent, her sister mentioned that a friend was making jewelry — and the casual comment planted a seed.
“I went home and tore apart a bunch of stuff I had laying around that I wasn’t wearing,” said Wormworth, who made a few pairs of earrings in that first feverish session. “I had no tools. I had no idea. It was the most primitive approach to jewelry making it could be.”
But she kept at it, soon acquiring the proper supplies, and designed nine more pairs of earrings, which she displayed at a friend’s restaurant. They sold out in one night. Twenty years later, the Bed-Stuy native is the owner of Mary’s Hands Jewelry, a shop brimming with her elegant, one-of-a-kind designs. “So far I haven’t had to quit, so I like to think I’m doing something right.”
Wormworth takes an improvisational approach to jewelry making, imbuing the process with her own energy. As a singer who spent 10 years leading an all-female big band, in addition to belting backup vocals for artists including Freddie Jackson, Amel Larrieux and Les Nubians, she’s accustomed to sprinkling her work with soul.
“I can pick up a material, and it just kind of dictates what happens next,” says Wormworth, who draws inspiration from architecture, African and Native American cultures, and her chosen media of precious metals and semi-precious gemstones. “I want to present something beautiful, something thoughtful, with reverence for the natural materials and the energy they hold.”
The result: unique, minimalist, well-crafted layering necklaces, rings, earrings and bracelets that are seriously pretty.
“I want to present something beautiful, with reverence for the natural materials and the energy they hold.”
Mary’s Hands Jewelry is celebrating its one-year anniversary as a brick-and-mortar shop, housed inside the home design store Peace & Riot. To mark the occasion, Wormworth has created a new earrings collection called “Love for Wakanda.” It launches this weekend, but for you, Black-Owned Brooklyn readers, she’s allowed an exclusive sneak peek.
The Black Panther-inspired collection features copper and silver earrings with Ghanaian vinyl beads and cowrie shells, some with arrows as a nod to Dora Milaje warriors. The set also includes ear climbers fashioned into colloquialisms like “dope” and “bae” that can be worn one at a time or paired in each ear to convey more — “black” and “love,” for example, or “blackgirl” and “magic.”
“I wanted this collection to be vibrant, like the movie,” says Wormworth. “And vibrant like us.”
401-403 Tompkins Avenue, maryshandsjewelry.com
