Elizabeth Locke calls herself an “accidental jeweler” at speaking engagements like the one she did recently for Windsor Jewelers clients at Wing Haven. She highlights her circuitous route from rural Virginia to Florence, Italy, to the bustle of Bangkok, Thailand, where she still works with artisans who handmake her designs.
Her jewelry is like her journey, beautiful and interesting. Each colorful piece in hammered 19-karat gold has a story to tell, from the tiny details of 19th-century Italian micromosaics she collects or the vibrant colors of smooth cabochon stones she hand-picks.
“I'm proud to say I still choose each stone, and I still draw all the designs,” she says. “I move stones around on my desk until I create what I see in my mind's eye. The design is always inspired by the stone, not the other way around.”
She follows her instincts for what looks and feels good. That’s a lot like what she’s done in life, too.
Locke grew up in Staunton, Va., where her father was an English professor at Mary Baldwin University. She spent summers traveling around Europe on money her father made from a bestselling textbook. At just 11, she was given her own table beside a cocker spaniel and a plate of cookies by a gracious restaurant owner in Salerno, Italy, sparking a lifelong desire to return.
Locke went on to study Italian at Duke, spent a year abroad in Italy and later followed an Italian boyfriend to the University of Florence, where she pursued her master’s in Italian literature. She stayed another five years before her Italian adventure ended abruptly when an accessory-designing business she’d started went bankrupt during a recession.
Locke moved to New York, where she found work translating and freelance writing for Italian magazines. Over dinner one night at a magazine launch, she met the editor of Town & Country, who hired her and sent her on assignment with a fashion photographer to Venice.
Locke married, moved back to Virginia, and continued to write for Town & Country. She pitched a story on shopping in Bangkok and discovered a new passion in the three weeks she spent there. She met a group of goldsmiths handmaking jewelry and an eclectic local sapphire collector. The model they were photographing for the magazine brought along her husband, John Block, who happened to be the head of the jewelry department at Sotheby’s.
“At the end of this trip, John told me I was in the wrong business,” Locke says. “‘Elizabeth,’ he said, ‘You should be in the jewelry business.’… By the time I got back to the U.S., my mind was made up.”
After six months studying gemology in New York, she flew back to Bangkok and found the goldsmiths she’d met. She began creating Elizabeth Locke Jewels in the summer of 1988.
When she focused on creating looks she would want to wear, Locke’s star began to rise, from the cover of W Magazine, to appearances in Elle, Harper’s Bazaar and Allure. Her big break came when she started selling pieces to Neiman Marcus.
Nearly 40 years later, Locke’s jewelry is sold worldwide from Boyce, Va., to Madison Avenue in New York. Her jewelry is sold here at Windsor Jewelers at Phillips Place.
Her jewelry is high fashion, but Locke prides herself on making pieces people can wear to the grocery store and the carpool line.
“I don't see any value in making something to pull out of the safe twice a year,” she says.
Locke still spends two months a year in Bangkok, designing and overseeing the handiwork of 20 goldsmiths. Looking back now, her career might not seem that “accidental” after all.
“At the time it seemed totally random, but nothing is random,” she says. “When you look back, it makes a pattern.”
"I'm proud to say I still choose each stone, and I still draw all of the designs"