6 Things To Know About Our Atlanta-based Glass Jewelry Studio
Welcome to our new Smart Glass Jewelry blog. We’ve had so many new customers discover us this past year (thank you Quarantine and a quick hard pivot into the digital world), so I wanted to tell you more about our jewelry studio, based out of Atlanta Georgia. We have a unique process to making our jewelry, so I wanted to give you a behind-the-scenes of who we are and what we stand for at Smart Glass Jewelry.
HANDCRAFTED GLASS JEWELRY: Turning Post-Consumer Bottles into Beauty
So first, thank you for supporting a small business, and by small I mean really small, like micro. We are a team of three in an art studio in Atlanta, with a small village of supporting members for the business side of things. But when we say your jewelry is handcrafted, we mean it. Every single day I am in the studio soldering, cutting bottles, pulling orders, finishing jewelry, and my most favorite task: packing boxes.
Even after 28 years of working with post-consumer glass bottles, my favorite thing in the world is to pack up your jewelry purchases for you, see where it is going, write a little note on your order, and send my work out into the world to be enjoyed by you and those you love. Technically I make jewelry, but what I send out into the world is happiness and delight. I love transforming garbage into beauty, it’s the ultimate alchemy and feels like I create magic in the world as my job.
SMART GLASS JEWELRY FACTS
There is a lot that happens at our little Atlanta Artisan Studio to make the jewelry. Here are some of my favorite facts about Smart Glass Recycled Jewelry:
- The colors you see are the exact colors of the bottles. I am taking everyday objects that you see all the time, and just changing your perspective on them.
- I use diamond bit saws, water, and giant custom-built kilns to transform the glass. I am completely self-taught and by combining tools from different industries (granite inlay, stained glass, ceramics and glass slumping) I have discovered a way to create a new raw material from the bottles.
- I have a patent on my studio technique which I’m super proud of. It’s my very expensive piece of paper that proves I invented something.
- When I’m cutting a bottle I can feel how liquid the glass is. Corona is the driest, Budweiser the wettest. Champagne bottles are the strongest, probably to keep all the bubbles in.
- Yes, I dumpster dive almost every single day. Almost every day after I leave the studio, I stop by the local glass dumpsters and search for the bottles we need for upcoming orders.
- I’ve been working with post-consumer bottles almost 28 years now, and I still am enamored by how pretty the glass is. Every single day as I unload the kilns or comb through the bin looking for the exact match to an earring piece, I see a certain piece of glass and think, “oh wow THIS piece so beautiful.”
These are just a few little things to welcome you into my world, and to remind you that as a wearer or lover of Smart Glass Jewelry, you are a part of our story too. I’ll go into more detail about individual aspects of the studio process later, but for now if you want more info take a look About Page and enjoy a video to learn more about our process.
Post-consumer bottles can be transformed into jewelry
And… I LOVE questions. If you have a question, please reach out me on Instagram and leave me a comment!
ABOUT SMART GLASS
Smart Glass Jewelry is an artist's studio based out of Atlanta, Georgia specializing in upcycling post-consumer glass bottles into wearable, beautiful jewelry.
ABOUT KATHLEEN PLATE
Kathleen Plate is the talented artist behind Smart Glass Jewelry. Born and raised in Cathlamet, a small town in Washington State, her small-town roots are evident in her minimalist, “keep it simple” design philosophy. Now residing in Atlanta, Georgia, you’ll find her every day in her studio, tinkering and creating, and hitting the occasional dumpster at night.