Jeweler Erica Montejo finds beauty in subtraction. She’ll take an art deco motif, natural item or modern architecture element, and break apart the form for her striking Tiny Erica Jewelry designs. “It’s a lot of disassembly and stripping everything down to its bare bones,” says Montejo. “It’s very clean, it’s very minimal, it’s very lightweight.” Take her seedpod necklace ($68), in which she abstracts the shape by interlocking two handmade craggy-edged seedpod charms to make a weightless-looking 3-D charm. In her Lakewood home studio, she spends hours carefully cutting, folding, scouring, soldering and filing ethically sourced metal. Often, she’ll tumble her creations for a polished finish, hammer texture into it or set a gemstone from a local show. The scars on her hands show her commitment to making each piece last for her customers. “They’re going to wear it when they’re gardening, building with their hands, moving to a new house, raising their children and just living their lives,” Montejo says. tinyerica.com
Best of Cleveland 2017: Architectural Jewelry
The beauty of Tiny Erica Jewelry is the sum of all its magnificent parts.
best of cleveland
2:00 PM EST
October 24, 2017