CAROLYN BENSINGER HANDCRAFTED JEWELRY

18K Gold & Sterling Silver Open Link Bracelets

Get your boogie boards ready for fun-filled times at Good Harbor Beach in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

The length of the beautiful white sands bordering the Atlantic Ocean serves as a grainy walkway or a place for lounging.  Massachusetts is also home to featured jewelry designer Carolyn Bensinger.

Jewelry making is a creative outlet where tidbits of any source of inspiration from travel to nature are unleashed by way of vivid displays of precious metals, precious gemstones, crystals, or even wood.  It is a decidedly explosive form of self-expression.

Bensinger’s rustic, commanding jewelry collections of sterling silver, 18-and 22-karat white and yellow gold, gemstones and found objects is a testament that great beauty can come from unusual material combinations and asymmetrical forms.

Her experimental approach to design is part architectural, part geometric, and part contemporary art.  Each brooch pin, link bracelet or gold necklace is the equivalent of turning the pages of a book where the nuance of a new design is an evolution.  During Bensinger’s youth, however, her eager attempts at making jewelry and clothing were nothing short of disastrous.

18 - and 22K Gold Necklace with Boulder Opal, Tourmaline, Sapphire & Ancient Roman Glass Fragment

“I took art classes at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; carved animals from bars of soap at summer camp; made awful jewelry for my mother and sewed clothing for myself by hand that I was too embarrassed to wear outside my bedroom,” she recalls. 

“I mastered some of the skills and taught myself others.  I took my first jewelry class at Massachusetts College of Art in 1986 and I realized I had to become a jewelry maker.  I had discovered the perfect expressive outlet to create the art that had always been a part of my life.”

Bensinger’s strength lies within her proclivity for blending a highly distinctive visual language with wearability.

Her brooch pins seem like diminutive stone monuments in their weighty looking proportions, contrasting gold and silver metals, and etchings.  Whether clear-cut or abstract form is very important to Bensinger and this is evident in all of her handcrafted modern jewelry designs.

“I have learned how to trust my own instincts as an artist.  For me, this means creating hand-fabricated one-of-a-kind pieces.  Even designs that I repeat are created individually by hand thus each piece develops its own particular characteristics.

18K Gold Turquoise & Coral Earrings

I draw influence from the shapes and textures that I see around me and by observing the constant interaction of positive and negative space in the world, all kinds of rocks, weathered pieces of wood and metal.

I make jewelry that is comfortable and versatile.  I want it to be worn and not relegated to the jewelry box.”