Merzatta

"We began as a love story. Chris shocked us both when he proposed out of nowhere and the spark in that moment started Merzatta. We began working together on a private island in the Caribbean, on an architecture build so impressive that it had a six-page spread in Vogue when it finally finished a few years later. Mid-build, as the American economy tanked and part of our crew was cut, Chris and I returned to my hometown in New Jersey with few job prospects in architecture or the arts and expecting our daughter five months later. We were in love, talented, and broke, and found inspiration while staying busy together during the 2009 recession. Unemployment had a fixed deadline, but self-employment was a state of mind. We had innocently collected pine cones and corals on the beaches of the island, and in this new predicament began carving and casting them, discovering new ways to see the forms and then moving those into metal. We set up a jewelry studio in our apartment and five weeks after Laurily's birth, in the fall of 2010, we showed our first collection at the home of a neighbor. We took the momentum from that night and exhibited at our first Art Fair in 2010. In 2016, we were awarded the Outstanding Professionals in the Arts Award for Morris County, in large part for successfully starting an arts business in midst of the recession. We moved our studio to professional space in Morristown in 2018, and opened a showroom a few blocks away in 2019.  Years later, we're as eager as ever to be part of your evolving jewelry story."