Her Latvian last name may be tough to pronounce, but that doesn’t matter to Jill Zvaigzne – she’s gone simply by Jill Z. since childhood, and her Ze Collection from I.B. Goodman has gained international recognition, including the American Gem Society’s Overall Excellence in Design award and the World Gold Council’s Gold Trends 2000 design competition. The Cincinnati-based jewelry designer has been heralded for her sensuous and beautiful yet easy-to-wear pieces, which even women who have never worn designer jewelry before find comfortable and versatile. IDEX spoke to Zvaigzne recently about her foray into the jewelry industry and her rapid rise in the world of design.

Q: How did you get into jewelry design? This wasn’t the path you were on in terms of your career, right?

 

A: No, I definitely fell into it. I was in my last year of college, majoring in commercial art. I figured I’d go into advertising. While I was taking an elective class in metal, one of my friends said she got a job at a jewelry store. I thought, I love jewelry, I can do that. So I applied for a sales position and got hired. About a month later they found out that I knew metalsmithing and they had a bench there so I started sizing rings, setting diamonds, refurbishing, a little bit of everything. Soon I had customers coming in and requesting me to design things for them and it grew from there. I was a bench jewelry for about six years, and then a chance meeting at the New York JA show led to a meeting with the owners of I.B. Goodman – we got to talking and they asked me to come out for a two-week internship at their factory in Cincinnati. I got to do some sketches and production, and a month later I got a job offer to do design work for their men’s products. That’s when I pretty much decided to make jewelry design my career. I’ve been with Goodman for eight years.

 

Q: Did the Ze collection grow out of what you were doing on the men’s side?

 

A: Well, the company was so nice to give me the opportunity to do other things, because they were known for and had hired me to do men’s product. They didn’t have anything for ladies and I was really interested in exploring design for women. So about three years ago I started with just a little grouping of twelve pieces that I displayed in a one-foot by one-foot square of display space at the New York show. I had to make my own displays because they didn’t have anything. I had homemade paper from the art store, Styrofoam balls, Elmers glue and toothpicks. One of the rings just kept selling and selling. I was shocked. It was independent retailers walking by and saying they wanted it for their store. After that success, Jonathan Goodman Cohen, the president of the company, was like, ‘What do we do with her now?’ Whatever it was, it was working. We actually have ten salesmen who cross the country and carried one little tray of my rings mixed in with the men’s stuff and it would sell and sell. A couple of them became best-selling rings. So at the end of the year he said, ‘I guess you’re going to have to keep doing what you’re doing.’ I came up with a few new pieces for spring and fall and it’s grown into roughly about 100 pieces. I move things out that are getting older or stale to keep new things in the line but not so much that it’s overwhelming.

 

Q: What kinds of designs did you start with?

 

A: I’m fairly simple in dress, not minimalist but something that’s not too busy. I want to create pieces that work with all facets of a woman’s life. The same jewelry should take her from a t-shirt and jeans to a dressed-up evening. So I liked the very sleek, clean lines, and that’s what I started drawing. I began with pearls and what I really liked was something that wasn’t like everything else out there. I set the pearl upside down at first. The pearl touched the skin and gold went over the pearl to protect it. Usually pearls are epoxyed in and I never wore them much because I’m not very delicate with jewelry. I thought more protection for the stone would be key. Instead of the pearl being set traditionally from the top down into the post I put gold over the pearl. The gold would then be the first thing that would hit anything.

 

Q: What sorts of stones and materials do you use?

 

When I first started I only used pearls and diamonds. We didn’t get into colored stones because the men’s pieces used only garnets, onyx and created stones. We really needed to educate ourselves on colored stones and find suppliers. We were really concentrating on quality and trying to figure out what we were doing. We started with inexpensive but beautiful gems such as blue topaz, garnet and citrine, figuring that if it didn’t work out there wasn’t a lot lost. But once the reaction came that people really liked the color, we kept buying and adding more exotic stones like Iolite, Madeira citrine, and rubellite. And color has been so hot for the past couple of years that it was nice to explore ideas with color. I still do a lot of pearls and a couple of diamond pieces. In terms of metal, we stick with 14k yellow and white gold. The yellow we use is mixed with alloy so it gives it more of a yummier 18k look. Essentially, we wanted to create a designer line that’s affordable. I love 18k gold and most designer’s lines are 18k, but gold is so expensive now it’s off the charts. It has benefited us because we’re now in a little bit of a price category that not a lot of designers are in.

 

Q: How do your customers and others describe your line?

 

A: Year after year, people keep telling me – to my surprise – that it’s very fresh. I do try not to get too influenced by what other people are doing. When I walk the aisles at jewelry shows I don’t like to get too close to the cases because I don’t want to see too much detail in other people’s work, although it’s important to see what trends are happening. But I really try to do my own thing, such as creating pieces that are meant to be seen from different angles. Whether it’s something to be seen from a profile, maybe diamonds tucked underneath the center stone so if you turn your hand slightly you can see it. It’s like a sculpture, it’s on your hand and someone is rarely looking at it straight down from the top. You see jewelry from different angles, you see the hand move. If you put something in that draws attention, you’ll want to look at it closer.

 

Q: What are your future plans in terms of your designs?

 

A: We’re starting a bridal line, which was introduced this past season at Las Vegas. It’s a big step for me, which makes me a little nervous! Fashion is wonderful and to see someone wear something you did is so exciting, but to know someone will be buying that ring for an occasion that symbolizes so much, that is huge. So I’m trying to be even more aware of detail and do my very best. We’ve started small with it, probably about fifteen bridal sets and a dozen anniversary rings, but there was a very good reception at Vegas and the one thing people said was that they wanted to see more. So that’s what I’ve been working on – by February I’ll probably have about 20-30 more sets.