Somehow it’s not surprising to learn that many collectors of Hilary Hachey’s jewelry are architects. There’s something architectural about the pared-down quality of her designs. They’re all about form, mostly geometric, not much embellishment.
It took her a while to find her signature look, and the key, she says, was to learn to ignore conventional wisdom about how to make a living as a jewelry artist.
“I feel strongly that if you do what you love, somehow people will pick up on that,” she says. “It will come through in the work and benefit you. Anytime I try to do something that should work and that seems smart, it doesn’t work.”
It took a few false starts to figure that out, however. “When I first started making jewelry for a living, everybody said, ‘You need to have a production line,’” Hachey recalls. “So I did one with wax carving in very organic leaf shapes. It never did very well.”
After she abandoned the organics and began following her own muse, her jewelry began to move. Since then she has given up chasing market demand and applying conventional wisdom. “I was doing what I thought I was supposed to do, what people told me was right.”
Recently, after seven years of designing with colored stones, she stopped using them, finding she prefers to work with all metal and a monotone palette. “I was never that into stones,” she says. “People like color. Color sells, but I just got sick of doing it. Maybe because I moved onto something else will come up.”
Ironically, there is something nature-like about some of her work – especially the cascading neckpieces – but a highly stylized take on nature.
She started making these puzzle piece necklaces one day after finding a bunch of squares on her work table from smaller pieces. ”I started playing with them and it evolved into these pieces with repeating patterns.”
“I like the look of multiplicity, the repetition of patterns. I like playing with the figure/ground relationship, the positive/negative space,” she says. “I try to make them look random. That’s kind of tricky, making something look random.”
You can find more jewelry from Hilary Hachey here.
