thank you 2010

Good bye 2010, you were not too perfect, but you were so lovely.

Wish all my friends and customers happy new year.

wanna be a cat

Ningyo Yamada

Cold night.  I miss holding a warm cat in winter.  

His name was Tetsu.

One day my sister called my office in Tokyo to tell me he had gone and she cried on the phone. 

He was laid to rest in the cemetery by my mother and sister.

If I can't get a cat now, what if I myself become a cat for two days.

For just two days, forget about everything - old invoices and tax things and just sleep deep as a cat.

snow day

Hope you had a wonderful holiday.  

I slept and slept during Christmas after making a lot of orders from stores before holiday.  Thank you so much customers who picked my jewelry for your holiday gifts. 

Today (snow day!) I somehow end up watching Joan Rivers documentary.  
Age 75 and she is still continuing.  
I will be dreaming my age 75 tonight.

cold!

This week will be freezing cold in NY.  Today, even the highest is only 24F.  

It equals to -4C, and again it's the highest, mother!  

.  

Under this cold weather there is no space for fashion for me - puffy black coat, gray sweater, long warm boots, muffler and hat.  No skin exposure, but here are tiny hidden sparkles on my ears saying I'm here!  

perspective

At jewelry district in NYC one lady was speaking to someone about her trip during the holiday.

"I'm going home in Switzerland this winter.  There is my once-a-year event.  I go skiing there, where I'm like this tiny in the big nature.  Then I can get my perspective back."

I envy her.
But I've been here for ten years.  My perspective was grown here, so I wonder if there is any perspective I should retrieve now.

Maybe I go Grand Canyon just to refresh.

sample sale this Thu & Fri!

Come and enjoy our sample sale this Thu & Fri.

Past samples and discontinued items will be there with special prices from three NYC based designers.

(Judith Haas jewelry will participate only Thursday.)

sample sale!

 

 

We are having a sample sale coming Thursday and Friday in Soho with a hat designer Tsuyumi and a jewelry designer Judith Haas.  Our past samples and discontinued items will be up to 75% off.

date:  December 9th and 10th (Thursday and Friday)

time:  12:00 - 7:00

place: 594 Broadway #1203S (between Houston and Prince), NYC 10012

glossy magazine

Yayoi Forest's Oxidized Star and Diamond Necklace has been featured in Glossy Magazine.

One of my favorite pieces!  Thank you Glossy Magazine.

a letter

I'm making this necklace right now.  It's a letter to myself.  

I'm me, myself today and always.

New Jewelry Added!

Enjoy new collections at Yayoi Forest website!  

For occasional news and promotions, subscribe to our newsletters!

a lot of thanks

Can you see the heart?  

Happy Thanksgiving Day!

winter in NY

"You gotta have a lot of things you can have fun in NY!"

You would say that to me, but but but, there are only two places I exist in my life; my studio in Brooklyn and Jewelry District in Manhattan.

I'm running streets to get things done around 47th Street and 6th Avenue; casting, buying gold chains, seeing a stone setter, buying 1.5mm black diamonds and go back for another casting.

Someone told me that there is a team of undercover police in this jewelry district but I still don't know which guy is one of them. I'm coming here so often that I might recognize them in the future?

And this year, again I am watching this big Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center.

It reminds me that it's been another year already, and at the same time it makes me sentimental thinking of my father who gracefully passed away last year, and my mother and sister living in Japan.

It's the season that people in NY are even nicer than usual and that makes me want to be a better person.
You opened a door for me and told me that my big fat cotton bag was lovely.  You made my day.

Lovely and sentimental, that's a winter in NY to me.

season of studs

In winter, I tend to wear stud earrings.
Wearing a wool scarf around a neck, it's comfortable to wear something small attached to the ear.

When winter sun light comes, the earring shines with reflected light.  I like watching a woman who has a nice and modest glitter around her face.

My current favorite is my own gold starburst earrings.

dona dona

It must be the busiest month for jewelers.  

I've been sending orders out to stores that are getting ready for the holidays.  

During finishing those rings, I was singing dona dona song.

This Yiddish song is popular in Japan. 

As kids, we sang this song as a joke when we were on a school-bus comparing us to calves that were carried on a wagon to a market.  

I felt like I was seeing those rings off at the gate of our home. 

They are on an old wagon and will be on a trip shortly.

When I found English version of this song today, I was shocked that this song was a bit cruel in English.  

Wow, the third verse, how realistic is that.

Dona Dona

1. On a wagon bound for market
There's a calf with a mournful eye.
High above him there's a swallow
Winging swiftly through the sky.

How the winds are laughing
They laugh with all their might
Laugh and laugh the whole day through
And half the summer's night.


Dona dona dona dona
Dona dona dona down
Dona dona dona dona
Dona dona dona don


2. "Stop complaining," said the farmer
"Who told you a calf to be;
Why don't you have wings to fly away
Like the swallow so proud and free?"


3. Calves are easily bound and slaughtered
Never knowing the reason why.
But whoever treasures freedom,
Like the swallow must learn to fly

Original Yiddish text by Aaron Zeitlin & Shalom Secunda
tr. Arthur Kevess & Teddi Schwartz

what I was doing last week

 

I've been doing a construction work for a ring.  

Lately I'm into layering jewelry.  I like layering short and long necklaces, layering some bangles in silver, brass & rose gold, and layering rings in different gold colors and a small diamond ring.  I like to do one of those at a time.  Never do all at once.

My customer happened to order "seven diamond ring" and her wedding ring together and I have decided to reconstruct the diamond ring to raise the top diamond part so that both rings can be worn together comfortably.  I made one piece in silver and checked if they worked together when they were layered.

It needed some time to do this construction but it was fun.   

No wonder there are many jewelers who used to be architects.  If you can do a technical drawing for a bridge, it should be a piece of cake.

 I would love to see other rings will be added in the future to those two rings.  I love Italian older ladies wearing many many rings together.  It's a history of you.

wedding rings

I like making wedding rings.  

I feel warm when one ring is small enough to fit comfortably inside of another ring. 

Congratulations on your wedding.

warm night

Don't know how to read a Chinese name of this "hand-pulled noodle" place in Chinatown.  

At this tiny place packed with customers, we had warm soul food from China in a cold night of NY.

another "unusual engagement rings" column

My jewelry designer friend Satomi has emailed me that both of our rings were featured at Glamour website as "5 pretty and unusual engagement rings we're loving right now."  

We met last year and became friends.  

We have similar back ground; both Japanese, started learning making jewelry after coming to New York and we speak in the Osaka dialect.  In my case, after living in Tokyo & NY and married to a Tokyo-grown husband my dialect is almost gone though.

Thank you Glamour for picking both of our rings.

Satomi's ring.  See our similar background?

working, working... and shopping desire

It's been a while. 

After my last update, I became sick, very sick.

I had a fever of 103F and I had to stay on a bed for a week.  

Then I had another trade show in New York, then now I am working very hard to catch up the orders.  

I'll soon update my new collections on my website.  Thank you so much for emailing me to ask for my new collection images, I will really do it. 

I once lost my appetite and fashion desire after my sickness, but now I eat too much and I'm back to daily online shopping habit.

Speaking of fashion desire, today I found Melissa X Alexandre Herchcovitch shoes on Atlantic Avenue. 

 What a great collaboration of two great Brasilian designers.  I'll go back to the store again next weekend and if I found them again, I consider the shoes are linked by fate...and I'll get them.  

They are not enamel leather, they are plastic as many of you know about Melissa's shoes.

That means my friend Victoria would approve them for me to wear.  

Plus they are $140 but they don't look like only $140.

after the show

Now one show is over, and another one will come in three weeks.  

It's always so nice to see my customers (in this case store buyers) at a trade show.   

I don't usually see a lot of people in a day.  Most of days I am making jewelry alone at my studio listening to radio like an old man.  I think at a show I'm seeing faces that a normal person would see in a half year.

My jewelry will fly to many many locations in the U.S. by the end of November.  I hope each of them will do well there and most importantly I hope you will like it.

What I want now is good oldies band music, something sweet and tender. 

When I'm fully recovered (I'm not sick, I'm just too exhausted after a show), I need my hair cut, I want to chat to my friends at a coffee shop for hours and I hope I can enjoy the last summer moments in a park.

hot brooklyn jewelers!

Yayoi Forest is picked by Refinery29 for The 3 Hottest Brooklyn Jewelers.

Check the article and you can get 20% off for the three jewelry pieces which they've picked in the article with a coupon code, Refinery29 (until SUNDAY, Aug 8th 2010).

Three items include Oxidized Silver Cuff Bracelet, Rosecut Diamond and Oxidized Silver Necklace, and Filgree Double Finger Ring with Black Diamond.

Thanks Refinery29 an viva Brooklyn!

lone cat

Blue background makes look like the cat is a loner.  I want this painting in my bedroom.  

At an elementary school in Brooklyn.

smile face + sad face

I had lovely customers from Iceland the other day.  
She had special-ordered smile face & sad face earrings with me before she came to NY with her son.  It's always nice to meet my customers in person!


While I was making smile face and sad face earrings at my jewelry bench, I suddenly remembered about Alma.
Alma was my English teacher, and I remember she was originally from Pueto Rico and moved to LA when she was a child.
I went this English language school from thirteen to seventeen once a week after school and she was always there.


Most of days she was smiling cheerfully, she looked like the happiest person in the world.  She loved making us laugh at a class.
However I sometimes saw her sobbing at school, and later I found out that she got homesick.  


One day she told me "Don't be afraid to express your feelings."  I was fighting back with tears all day, and she noticed something was wrong with me.  But I didn't want to cry in front of other students.  I tried to explain about it, but my English was so poor and I could say nothing to her.


She loved kids so much and it was my first time to be invited to my teacher's apartment for a party.
She ordered sushi for us.  Next day she had terrible stomachache because she ate leftover sushi for her breakfast.


The last time I saw her was when I visited her place in LA during my trip in the US when I was in college.  She took me to a midnight drive, to me everything she showed me was like an American movie.  


If I could meet her again, I would be able to surprise her that I'm now a jewelry designer living in NY.  
I tried to look her up online, and I found nothing about her.  When I was a teenager, I thought every American woman was like her because she was the only American I knew.  But now I know that she was truly the one and only in the world. 

1Q84

I've been reading Haruki Murakami's 1Q84, his newest novel.

It's a three-volume hardcover, I don't want to read too fast, but I can't stop it.

I try to read it only when I'm in my bed before I sleep.

It may be a reason why I dreamed of a beautiful girl from high school.  

Shortly after we graduated from college, I heard that she married to a guy who wouldn't let her go out from a house.  

She couldn't come to any of gatherings.  

She asked him, and he always said no to her.

It was a long time ago and at that time it wasn't supposed to be called violence if it's not physical.

Mixed with Murakami's novel story, my desperate dream of her was dark like a wellhole.

I felt very thirsty in the morning and prayed for her that she's happy now.

yes-no box

There's only a month to the next tradeshow.

I make some samples and then I think it would not fit to my line.  It repeats.
The thing is that I don't know if I like it until I actually make one with my hands.

I imagine a YES-NO box, which tells me if the piece in the box is right or wrong.
Right, there is no right or wrong in this field.  

I wish I had a small cabin in a wood so that the only thing I can do it to make things with my hands.
In reality, I pay bills, cook two meals a day, and go online to check what shoes Whitney Port is wearing.

on his birthday

July 7th was my father's birthday.  

I tried to think of something about it and then I stopped.  

I stopped because all I could think of is that I still couldn't believe that my father is not here or anywhere.  It makes me feel so strange.

And I feel strange about the fact that I live far, far away from my family. I hope someday someone will invent something that we can transport to the other end of the globe in one hour.

white cat in a gray building

The entire diamond district in Manhattan is now closed for their summer vacation.  

People were running around in the block to get done their business/errands before their closing.

I met a beautiful white cat with green eyes in an old building filled with jewelry tool companies. 

Finding a cat in a cold building has an oasis effect (to me).

not so traditional wedding rings

Refinery29 has a post for not too traditional wedding bands.

They've picked Yayoi Forest rings including Yayoi's Lacy Ring and Melting Love Ring.  

daily candy pick-up

Yayoi Forest's Silver Melting Heart Earrings are picked up for today's Daily Candy "I'll Melt with You".

You can check those earrings in person at the lovely store, Catbird in Brooklyn.

happy 4th

I hope you had a wonderful July 4th weekend.  

I survived the weekend without no water in the building, but somehow I've got nice design ideas during the weekend.

jewelry of love; Geinsbourg, Capote and others.

On EAST SIDE BRIDE blog, Brooklyn jewelry store Catbird has done their guest blog.  

They picked world famous couples and curated perfect pieces of jewelry for their love.

For example, my Melting Love Ring was picked for Marlene Dietrich & Edith Piaf.

You'll enjoy reading it and I'm sure it inspires a lot of people to find their wedding jewelry.  

If you are looking for a jewelry for your anniversary, you should check this post, too.  

It's a fun journey to find a unique piece that suits your own story.

black cat

I'm actually really good at mimicking cats' meows.  

I can pull them out from their habitat with my meow.

I love black short hair cats, sorry that some people call you unlucky animals.

the word of a mermaid

I want to share my friend, Ningyo Yamada's beautiful paintings with you.  
She used to major jewelry design at FIT like me, and now she creates beautiful worlds with her hands in Japan.  My favorite one is "Tako Chandelier" (Octopus Chandelier).  Enjoy as a mermaid in the dreaming sea.

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