Designer > Erica Weiner

In 2005, in her small tenement apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan (only a block from where her paternal grandmother was born in 1909), Erica made her first piece of jewelry. The pair of mis-matched earrings were a gift for a good friend's birthday, and they garnered so much attention that they sparked the birth of a mini-empire. Erica graduated from Vassar College in 2001 with a degree in Art History. A largely self-taught craftswoman, the only formal visual art training she received was during a year abroad in the textiles department at the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland. After school she spent time as a costume designer for Broadway shows and as a seamstress and design assistant at various fashion houses in New York. While learning about design and production from these freelance jobs, she gathered a collection of curiosities and used them to develop a small line of jewelry with an emphasis on affordability and craftsmanship.