Sarah Graham shows jewelry-making for benefit

It might start with decayed wood or rattlesnake grass or the remnants of exploding pinecones.

Nature provides the inspiration for the creations of San Francisco jeweler Sarah Graham, whose work ends up on magazine covers, in elegant shops and adorning the bodies of celebrities such as Sharon Stone, Kim Basinger and Angelina Jolie.

"What I love about nature is that you get geometry," Graham said. "But then you get mutations and anomalies, too."

She has a metalsmithing studio in the city's Dogpatch neighborhood, a degree in international business from UC San Diego and a father who runs a nonprofit that provides microloans to women in Mexico and Guatemala.

A few years ago, Graham decided to do something for those women. This month, she succeeded.

Her idea combined art and philanthropy. On a recent Sunday afternoon, seven family friends paid $500 apiece for an inside look at an esoteric craft.

They watched her produce a piece of jewelry, roughly from start to finish, and bought a few items, too. It added up to $6,800 for NamasteDirect, a microcredit organization in San Francisco founded and run by Sarah's father, Bob Graham.

"Today, we're going to make something brand-new," the jeweler told her guests, who had gathered in her 1,500-square-foot studio in the enormous American Can Co. building on Third Street. The goal was a pendant. The starting point was an ear of blue corn that Bob Graham had brought back from a recent trip to Guatemala. His 38-year-old daughter thought at first that the kernels had possibilities, but they proved too heavy, and not quite interesting enough, when they were cast.

"They're cool, but I could tell right away they wouldn't quite cut it," explained the metalsmith, who had done some work in advance to compress into four hours what would normally have stretched over several days.

"When you're dealing with a luxury market, it has to be fabulous," she added. "If it's fabulous, the price isn't important. If it's not fabulous, it could be free and it's not going to go."

Serendipity plays a role

While experimenting with the kernels, she noticed that some wax had spilled onto the cob itself. When it was removed, it left a pattern that captured both the symmetry and irregularities of nature. So she chose the most interesting portion of the spill and cast it in 18-karat gold.

It was time for the firing process.

"Pull out your sunglasses," Graham told her guests. "I'm going to have a big flame right here."
The fire raged, first purple and then orange. It was a Prometheus moment, spectacular and deafening, with the ritual punctuated by police sirens outside.

"What kind of toys did she play with as a kid?" Sherrie Ilse teasingly asked Bob Graham after things settled down.

Graham and colleague Sarah Greenberg poured the molten gold into a flask and broke away the shell to reveal the transformed piece. They cleaned it, filed away the sharp edges and bezel-set a sprinkling of diamonds in seven of the indentations.

Then they used glass beads to blast a fine finish inside the cup shapes and brought the raised edges to a high polish. The piece was cleaned again in an ultrasonic machine, and a snake chain was added.

Along the way, the group broke for lunch, provided by the aptly named Alchemy catering company.

Processing the process
"I thought her presentation was fabulous," said Jim Hansen, 68, who lives in the Kings County town of Corcoran. "I was surprised that it was such a manufacturing atmosphere, but I shouldn't have been. I was amazed at how labor intensive it was."
Ilse, a 65-year-old Santa Cruz resident, said, "It reminded me of making a cake or going to the dentist."

Giedre Nakutyte Mahant, 27, enjoyed witnessing a process that laypeople are rarely able to glimpse. But she relished even more the rationale behind the event.
"I thought it was a nice idea to support the craftswomen of Guatemala and Mexico by celebrating a craft in San Francisco," said the fine arts photographer, who lives in the city.

The finished pendant was priced at $2,410 and purchased by Betsy Hansen.
"There's something to be said for a piece that's unique," said Hansen, 65. "And when you put it on, you think about the story behind it."

Graham pondered what to call the pendant. All her collections are named - from Foil, which evokes the feel of crumpled aluminum foil, to Paper Chain, inspired by a necklace made by her nieces and nephew from strips of paper glued together.
"We could call it Corncob, but that's not a very good-sounding name," Graham said. "Let's call it Maize."

"It's not a hobby"
Her pieces range from $200 to $20,000 and are sold in more than 100 stores in North America and Asia. She relies on 18-karat gold and blackened steel to distinguish her work, but also uses Akoya and Tahitian pearls and black, white and cognac diamonds.

"When I make things that seem safe - what everybody else is making - they don't sell," she said. "When I make a piece, you either love it or hate it. There's no comparison shopping."

She never does anything that requires less than an ounce of gold and adjusts her wholesale prices continually, depending on the price of gold when an order is placed.
"I try to be unemotional about my prices," she said. "As much as I love what I do, it's not a hobby."

Her mother painted, sewed and did needlepoint. Her father is a retired certified public accountant who is now running, pro bono, his second microcredit organization. Their daughter is a mix of artistry and business acumen.

She was headed for a career in a stock brokerage firm but quit after two weeks, deciding to pursue the gem trade instead. For two years, she learned Old World techniques in an unpaid apprenticeship with a Carmel jeweler, supporting herself as a waitress.

Meanwhile, she fell in love with her hairdresser, Michael Amato, who is now her husband as well as co-owner and production manager at the studio, which opened eight years ago. They traveled around the world and then lived in Mendocino, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore., before returning to Northern California, where Graham grew up.

"We spent two years in L.A.," she said. "We contacted stylists, designers, celebrities - and two years was enough. We built a lot of connections. If you want celebrities, you have to be in L.A. If you want to be in magazines, you have to be in New York."

Graham and Amato work with four other people in the studio and in a 1,000-square-foot office, two floors above. Right now, life is hectic.

"We just got back from the shows," Graham said. "We got orders for 25 to 30 percent of what we sell all year. And they want it all by Mother's Day."

She doesn't mind - she still remembers the early years, when she had to get up every two hours to change the temperature on the kiln as she was firing flasks. Now she can afford a kiln-minder, a computer that she programs to follow a 14-hour burnout cycle.

These days, she's spending more time selling and promoting, but she still manages to work on every piece made in her studio.
"I think that distinguishes me from a lot of jewelers," Graham said. "I love production work. Because every time I do it, I think I get better. A lot of jewelers get bored."

Resources
-- NamasteDirect: http://www.namaste-direct.org/
-- Sarah Graham: http://www.sarahgraham.com/
E-mail Patricia Yollin at pyollin@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page E - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle