Alexandra Connell

‘Ancient Echoes’ - Jewelry that evokes the ancient and mysterious yet is contemporary at the same time.

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Alex has been a jeweler for approximately forty-four years. She attended the Rhode Island School of Design studying sculpture and briefly attended the College of Arts & Crafts, Oakland, learning jewelry fundamentals. She lived in Italy and Spain for 2 years before moving with her son, Kim, to Big Sur, California, where she lived until 1970 when she made Humboldt County her home. In the late 1980s & 1990s her jewelry knowledge was hugely expanded by participation in jewelry classes and workshops at Humboldt State University and at the Mendocino Art Center. Aside from these, Alex is self-taught in jewelry and totally self-taught in lapidary work.

With a passion for the exquisite beauty of gem stones, Alex searches for unique and especially outstanding stone material; cutting, cabbing, carving and inlaying most of the gems in her jewelry. Believing that natural artifacts have the power to draw one into the little worlds of their own, the stone is often the main focus and inspires much of Alex’s designing. She sometimes derives motifs from the ethnographic work of Africa and Pre-Columbian Meso and South America. Her work is forged and fabricated mostly in sterling and fine silvers, often utilizing embossing and etching. She makes boxes and serving utensils with stone inlayed in the lids and handles as well.