Jewelry maker really cooks

But Nordin also has taken her talent out of the kitchen, creating custom jewelry and marketing it through her firm, Donna Designs.

"Most of the time my inspiration for a piece of jewelry will come from the color of the stones," Nordin said. "The inspiration really comes from the ingredients, whether they be food in the kitchen or stones and precious metals in jewelry."

Nordin, 63, equates making jewelry to producing a nice dish to present to a restaurant patron.

"With jewelry, I'm presenting pieces to somebody like I would with food, even if it's something I wouldn't particularly wear myself," she said. "But that's where it differs because I wouldn't serve anything that I wouldn't want to eat. But I do make jewelry that doesn't look good on me."

While she prefers to make necklaces, Nordin also crafts bracelets and earrings, although the latter are usually specialty orders.

"I'm not the kind of person who wants to match up everything, so if I have a necklace, I'm not going to have an exactly matching pair of earrings," she said.

Attended Le Cordon Bleu

Nordin's cooking history began when she enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris at age 18. In 1976 she opened her own cooking school in San Francisco, and by 1980 was working full-time doing teaching appearances around the country.

In 1984 she became head chef for Gourmet to Go, a Tucson catering company. Within two years, she and husband Don Luria opened Cafe Terra Cotta in St. Philip's Plaza. They later moved the restaurant to 3500 E. Sunrise Drive and renamed it Terra Cotta.

Nordin has been a featured chef on two PBS television series, as well the Discovery and Food Channels.

She was given the Award of Excellence, Chef Category, by the International Association of Culinary Professionals in 1999 and was nominated for a James Beard Foundation award in 1993.

Nordin also is the author of "Contemporary Southwest, the Terra Cotta Cookbook."

Barbara Farmilant, a Tucson sculptor and jewelry designer, said she has seen a change in Nordin's style over the past five years.

"She's very confident in what she does and has a good eye for design," Farmilant said. "Donna has expanded her repertoire and isn't afraid to take chances. I especially like the work she does with wire wraps and twists with chunky stones, and the way she mixes stones and pearls."

Farmilant, who has been designing jewelry for 10 years and is co-owner of Strung Out on Beads, 5460 E. Speedway, is Nordin's mentor and got her started making jewelry.

"Barbara brought me into a weekly jewelry-making group at her house, and once she saw I had a knack for it, encouraged me to continue," Nordin said.

Picking ingredients

Nordin said she enjoys choosing the ingredients for her pieces, although she views it as the hardest part of the process.

"It's a little stressful and can be overwhelming when you go to the Tucson gem show," Nordin said. "After doing this four years I'm much better at not feeling as frantic and getting a headache. You often don't know what to choose first, and if you're not careful you can overspend, which I do anyway."

Nordin continued, "I usually use gold-filled or vermeil (gold plate over sterling) pieces because real gold runs the price up. I'll also use sterling, but sometimes will change my mind partway through a piece, which is probably why it takes me so long. Along the way I get another idea and go with that."

On average, it takes Nordin between an hour and a half and half a day to create a necklace, depending on the stones she uses and the complexity of the piece. Her jewelry sells in the $200 to $400 range.

Nordin credits her years in the kitchen with giving her enough confidence to plunge into jewelry-making.

"Being able to create dishes and know how they will come out gave me the confidence to do something different and know I can be good at it," she said. "It's an intuition sort of feeling."

Nordin's jewelry can be found in the Tucson Museum of Art shop, 140 N. Main Ave., and at boutiques in California, Maryland and Ohio.

The inspiration really comes from the ingredients, whether they be food in the kitchen or stones and precious metals in jewelry.

Donna Nordin