Portfolio: Juliet Ames
December 4, 2007
By Hope Keller
Jewelry Images Courtesy of TheBrokenPlate
Juliet's Portrait by Bryan Burris.
Juliet Ames uses a hammer to break plates.
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Juliet Ames breaks plates for a living. A metals and craft major at Towson University, Ames went on to work for the Howard County Arts Council organizing gallery exhibits. Meanwhile, she kept up her own craftwork. The plate-breaking started with a mosaic mailbox. “There were leftover pieces, so I soldered them and wrapped them around my neck and got a lot of compliments,” says Ames, 28, who just had her first child, a boy.
Then things got crazy. “I got addicted to breaking plates,” Ames says. She quit her job and started selling her jewelry at craft shows and through Etsy.com, an online market for handmade goods.
Ames, a Baltimore native, collects plates obsessively. (“I think I’ve cleaned out all of Maryland of the great plates.”) She loves Johnson Brothers pieces. And china comes to her: “I wake up sometimes to plates at my doorstep.”
I break plates!
She breaks the plates with a hammer, smoothes the edges with a glass grinder, wraps the pieces in copper tape, puts lead-free solder around that and creates anything your heart desires: rings, earrings, cufflinks, necklaces.
Lately she’s started working with broken wedding plates, making necklaces for single friends of the bride. (Breaking plates is a tradition in many cultures.) “It’s a good-luck thing,” says Ames.
To contact Ames or to see more of her work, visit her website at www.ibreakplates.com, or visit TheBrokenPlate on www.Etsy.com.
