Designer | Color Analyst
As a kid I arranged my colored pencils by hue. My nail polish too. I still do this — with art, books, materials in my studio. It's less a habit than a way of thinking.
That instinct led me, eventually, to everything I do now.
I started in the gem trade in San Francisco, moved to Manhattan where I taught jewelry, and eventually back to Rochester where my studio is — where I design and make everything myself, one piece at a time. Along the way I spent years at trade shows, hands deep in stones, working alongside traders who'd traveled from India and beyond. Many of them arranged their gemstones by color the same way I arranged everything else in my world. It was never a coincidence.
"I noticed something that became impossible to ignore. Certain colors — and certain metals — made women more present. More themselves. Not dressed up, just visible in a way they hadn't been before. I needed to understand why."
The framework gave the instinct a language.
That question led me to color analysis, where I completed the mastery program at the International Image Institute under expert Karen Brunger. Her system is deeply refined — precise in a way that resonated immediately with how I already think. What I realized was that I'd already been doing this work at the bench for years — helping women find the piece that was exactly right for them, designing with stones and metals the way a colorist works with tone and light.
International Image Institute | Karen Brunger Mastery Program
My studio reflects this completely. The drawers of my red craftsman toolbox are lined with the colors of each season, each reflecting its own set of color drapes. The jewelry I create aligns with these seasons — from gem tones to metals. Moving through each season, feeling how they flow into each other, is still a meditation for me.
I AM A DEEP AUTUMN
The rich, saturated, earthy tones are the ones I feel most fully myself in — and you'll see that in everything I make and how I wear it. The pieces I put on my own body every day are the same ones I make for other women. They become part of who you are. Women tell me this all the time — a stranger across the room, a friend of a friend, someone they've just met. They spot the earrings, the cuff, the necklace. There's a recognition that happens when something is truly right for someone, and it turns out that recognition connects women to each other.
"Designing the piece. Reading the person.
Always the same practice."
— SARA SILVIO
If something here resonated —