Before launching her Tucson-based jewelry brand, Margaret Elandt was designing pieces for major retailers — now, she’s creating handmade work rooted in the Sonoran Desert she’s always called home.
Over her career, she has designed and produced pieces for many different jewelry companies, and her work has been carried by Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Anthropologie and Sundance Catalog.
She now owns her own business, Juvelarto Designs, specializing in handmade jewelry and metalworks.
Margaret Elandt, owner of Juvelarto Designs at a local market.
Elandt grew up in Tucson, and said she first became enamored with designing jewelry during her time studying at Pima Community College, pursuing ceramic sculpture and metalsmithing.
“I took some metals classes there, and completely fell in love with it,” she said.
As a jeweler and metalsmith, Elandt traveled around the country from Oregon to New York City to make a living in this industry. One of her favorite jobs, she said, was working for a high-end jewelry company in New York City.
“I remember Beyonce's mom came in and she wanted to create a jewelry line,” Elandt said. “So that was really fun."
She eventually left the hustle and bustle of the big city and moved back to Tucson and started Juvelarto Designs in 2018. Many of her pieces feature beautiful stone inlays, handmade metal designs, and stamped desert landscapes.
“I love metal,” Elandt said. “I only got more into stones with the (Tucson) Gem Show. I always was really more interested in metal, and then going to the gem show and seeing all the stones, at first, I (thought), ‘this is so overwhelming,' but once I started thinking about color, it helped me navigate what I wanted.”
Recently, Elandt said she has been branching out into casting, turning things from nature into wearable metal art.
Casts made from ocotillo spikes and other desert plants.
“I really love casting,” she said. “You can take an organic thing like a mesquite pod, or a mesquite leaf, or just some little thing you find in nature, and you can turn it into metal through the casting process.”
She said there is something special about being able to wear pieces of her desert home, and much of her other work showcases her love of the desert landscape.
“I’m always trying to make pieces that celebrate the Sonoran Desert, because I just think it's so beautiful, and I grew up here,” she said.
Her favorite works, she said, are ones that feature desert, monsoon, or lightning symbols.
Stamped hoops from Juvelarto Designs.
“I just love when a design is simple,” Elandt said. “I love a big rainstorm, and I learned later in life that the lightning bolts is one of the one of the symbols for Aquarius, which is what I am.”
To create each of her pieces, Elandt said she usually starts with a sketch.
“I'm a big sketcher, I’m always doodling,” she said. “I will sketch for collections that are wire, because it's all different shapes, and then I'll make a few pieces, and I'll look at them and move them around, look at them in proximity to each other. Some of the best designs come from a piece being flipped around in the wrong direction.”
Other times, she will just play with wire, and see what form it takes.
“I have wire that I form into shapes with mandrels, and sometimes just my hands and pliers,” she said. “And then I will hammer it flat and shine it and buff it, and then put those pieces together.”
To make replicating the designs easier, she said she often maps out the measurements of her pieces.
“It's really dorky, but it's just something that I really love — making a key to each piece, like you might need four and a half inches of this gauge wire. (Or) you need two and a quarter inches of this gauge wire,’” Elandt said. “I like all that really detailed stuff.”
If she’s working from a pattern, Elandt said a pair of earrings might take her 25 minutes to make, whereas rings often take two or three days to complete.
Stones in the process of being turned into rings.
"I start with a stone, and I think about the setting, whether it's going to have embellishments, or be very plain," she said. “It's almost like building a dress for the stone.”
Then, she forms the wire band, and solders it to the back of the sheet metal. The last step is setting the stone.
“I usually try and do a little assembly line of three or four at a time, because it makes more sense, and it's also better skill-wise, because I'm doing one thing four times,” Elandt said.
For her more intricate designs, Elandt uses custom-made stamps to press desert monsoon scenes and other artwork into the metal.
Find jewelry that reflects Margaret Elandt's love of the desert from Juvelarto Designs.
“I just hold the stamp with my left hand and put it down where I want it. Then I take a two-pound brass hammer that's pretty heavy, and I hit the top of the stamp, and that presses it into the metal,” she said.
One of the things Elandt said she loves most about creating art and jewelry is that the pieces can be deeply meaningful for her customers.
Stamped Monsoon necklaces from Juvelarto Designs.
“There's a lot of reasons that jewelry is special to people. Whether it's a keepsake, or love relationship, or has a lot of symbolism,” she said. “So I try to keep that in mind.”
Her work is currently sold alongside other local makers at Pop Cycle, Tucson Museum of Art, Antigone Books, and Arizona Poppy, as well as online on her website, juvelartodesigns.com.
