Matters of the heart reflected in Stephanie Ritchie's hand-crafted jewelery

There is a juxtaposition of soft and hard, of raw and refined, of pleasure and pain. It is the dichotomy of a life - of a heart.

 

Search paradoxes are PRECISELY what Stephanie Ritchie wishes to convey with the jewelry she crafts and every tiny masterpiece she creates, manipulating ordinary metal to become a conversation.

 

"Jewelry can signify status," she said. "It can signify wealth. Jewelry can be an occasion marker, a memento. And jewelry can tell a story. "

 

Ritchie's designs leave little doubt that she has many stories to tell.

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 The fact that she has never had any true formal training seems of no consequence when one views the scope of her work. It might, in reality, be the ace up her sleeve.

 

 

She has no preconceptions of what jewelry "should be." Instead, she lets the metal speak to her, finding her muse in people she's met, stories she's heard, a life that she's experienced.

 

"I believe that if you've lived, loved or lost ... your heart has some marks to show for it, "she said. "That's what I try to build into each pendant."

 

To market her work, Ritchie has opened a shop in Gulf Breeze that shares its name with her line of pendants, Tortured Heart.

 

"I did not set out to be a shopkeeper, but I rather like it," Ritchie said. "It has allowed me to meet so many people and hear their stories. 

 

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People will walk in here - strangers - and they'll look at those hearts, and before you know it, they're crying, telling me how they've lost someone to cancer or how they are in love for the first time at 50 years old ... It's amazing how opening that door has brought me closer to the human experience. "

 

 

Ritchie's collections of jewelry - Pitted Surface, Wear and Tear, and Tortured Heart - display a distinct eye and to inherent talent that seems barely contained by the metal. Each piece, hand-cast of silver and gold, bears textures and shapes that reflect their inspirations, "tortured" to become a tiny dish of tales.

 

"I get a lot of custom orders for hearts," Ritchie said. "Someone wants to fall in love, someone wants to get married, someone wants to get divorced ... most commonly, someone has a broken heart. Someone is bereaved, and they want to order a custom heart for themselves or for a family member that has a special stone in it, that has a design of their choosing, maybe with a patch or a stitch that reflects the healing heart. "

 

Other artists rave about Ritchie's work.

 

"I've never met anyone with her level of passion for art and craftsmanship,"

 

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 said fellow jeweler and friend Judy Nock Olsen. "I think she's a very visionary artist, and I think she's really talented at running this gallery. "

 

 

That talent has has become widely recognized, locally and nationwide. In addition to her Gulf Breeze store, Ritchie's designs are displayed in more than 18 galleries nationwide. But it is here that she finds most connection.

 

"That boomerang effect has really impacted my life, and I keep coming back," Ritchie said with a laugh.

 

As someone who grew up in the Pensacola community, her roots are planted deep, a great many memories made and lived here along these shores. 

 

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It is here that she marks time, turning out pieces of jewelry that bring people into her world.

 

 

Here, she transforms crude material into beauty - at articulation of emotion, a story translated beyond words. A heart on a string