“I don’t make jewelry for the masses,” said designer Page Sargisson.
“My jewelry is very specific,” she said. “It’s my point of view. It has a lot of texture, brush strokes, a tactile feeling and lots of color. People who follow me love they can see the hand of the artist on it, especially in today’s world where so much is made by computer. My pieces are all done by hand, almost all are one-of-a-kind and that makes a difference to people.”
Sargisson brought that sensibility to her second store, which opened Tuesday at 1250 Madison Avenue, on the southwest corner of 90th Street in Manhattan’s Carnegie Hill neighborhood. Her first store opened in November 2020 at 347 Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, which is also the site of her design studio where she creates wax carvings serving as molds for the designs, a traditional technique used in jewelry. She sells via her website as well.
Sargisson designs pendants, chains, rings, bracelets, earrings, wedding bands and engagement rings, with prices starting at $600 for an 18-karat gold gemstone necklace and peaking at $23,500 for 4.2-carat diamond necklace. Among her bestsellers: sapphire signet rings, priced at $2,200, and “mosaic” tablet pendants in diamonds, rubies and sapphires, ranging from $3,600 to $10,000.
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“I’ve always made things,” Sargisson said, noting that knitting and creating beaded necklaces have been hobbies since childhood. Her grandfather carved antique-style wood furniture in his basement studio in Groton, Mass. “That was an inspiration to me,” she said. “I learned how to carve.”
Before becoming a full-time designer, Sargisson designed on the side when she worked as a communications manager at Genentech, a San Francisco biotech company. Colleagues noticed her jewelry and at one point, she said: “I started selling it because people just asked for it. I remember going to marketing meetings thinking, my goodness, every single woman here is wearing one of my pieces.”
She relocated to New York in 2003 after her first marriage ended and she took another communications job at the Corkery Group. Her father died the same year, which triggered something inside her. “I have to say, there’s a time when someone close to you dies that kind of frees you up in some ways” to try something new. So she took classes in wax carving and metal smithing at the Craft Students League, preparing for her new career. “When I took the wax carving class, I finally was able to make what I had in my head.” Referencing her grandfather’s woodworking, Sargisson said, “Working with wax is very similar except it doesn’t have the wonderful smell of wood, but you can carve, sand and file it. It’s very similar.”
Before operating stores, her business centered on wholesale, with a small amount of online sales. “I sold in Japan for the first 10 years of my career. I had a strong following in Japan and a great distributor there.”
But the distributor went bankrupt after life in Japan was disrupted by a tsunami in 2011 and Sargisson shifted her design direction. “I got to be more creative in my own way and focus on the 18-karat line, which has been great.…I love that I can sit at the bench for hours creating more and more pieces and that I’m supported by a team of mostly artist graduates. I’m doing the sculptural, design part and then I have a team that helps me do the rest. We can all live in New York City making something artistic,” said Sargisson, who lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, is married again and has two children. Her team at work consists of two full-time and one part-time bench jewelers who polish, solder and set the stones, as well as a production manager and a few retail workers.
Reflecting the character of the jewelry itself, the interior of the new, 1,000-square-foot Madison Avenue shop features textured, painted walls with ceramic tiled sections. There’s a colorful, abstract mural by artist Caty Wooley, and the jewelry sits on industrial felt pads. There’s also a banquette Sargisson calls “the bored husband’s seat.” She said the intent was to create a retail space that’s fun and colorful.
“One of the reasons for opening my second store is I’ve had people coming from New Jersey and Manhattan for wedding bands and engagement rings,” Sargisson said. It’s a side of the business that’s “really exploded. I only did it a few times for private clients when I was mostly wholesaling. And once I opened a store, people saw my jewelry, and then we made more and more….Right now you have Tiffany’s, or the Jewelry District, which is really hard to navigate and find exactly what you want. But I fill a niche as a designer working with you, to create what you want.”
Sargisson said she spent a lot of money a year or so ago on online advertising. “I realized it made no difference to my online sales. But at the same time, sales at my Brooklyn store were growing exponentially. My customers were telling me that jewelry is personal. They want to touch it. They want to try it on. And so rather than spend money on online advertising, why not go to another neighborhood and find customers in the same way as Brooklyn? Carnegie Hill is fabulous because it is a neighborhood, and they are all these stores around that are also independently owned, similar to my block in Brooklyn,” Sargisson said, citing Le Lion for luxurious Italian knits, the Blue Tree shop for high-end women’s clothing, jewelry and home goods owned by actress Phoebe Cates, and Clic for contemporary photography, art, fashion, books and home goods, all near her Madison Avenue shop.
Asked how her business — which she wholly owns — is performing, Sargisson replied: “I can tell you that our sales in Brooklyn are 40 percent over where we were last year. The engagement rings are driving that. I don’t need to be a big brand, but generally, we’re just growing, which is really exciting.”
