Creation requires focus and inspiration. More than just finding something already there, making something new takes a process and an eye for detail. 

For Saskia, the creative process begins visually. During her recent trip to Tucson, she walked through literally miles of tables, each filled to the brim with beads from all over the world. Here lay crosses from Ethiopia, some over 100 years old, piled in heaps. There sat a collection of Tibetan pendants in varying sizes. At the corner booth, a new vendor with close to a thousand strands of Indian silver greeted her as she approached.

At each vendor - as Saskia's eyes flew over the selection and her hands sorted through the mounds - her mind made connections. This brass pendant from Afghanistan. That would look amazing next to the strand of carnelian back in Brooklyn. Add some of these Ethiopian brass spacers and it's perfect! 

Unlike most production systems, Saskia can only make so many of any one design. Every piece combines so many individual beads, each something Saskia found and can maybe never find again. Always finite. Her art combines both finding the most interesting and meaningful elements and then putting them in unique combination. You always know it's a SASKIA when the piece tells a story. 

Saskia jokes that she is like an ambassador of beads - learning their histories and giving a voice to the tales they tell. Our studio has thousands of beads, from everywhere in the world. We are travelers, and like to imagine how far these beads have come, all the hands they have touched.

There is a famous quote from the Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez: “Hay ciudades con barcos y ciudades sin barcos. Es la única división admisible, la única diferencia verdaderamente esencial” - 'There are cities with boats and cities without boats. That is the only division permissible, the only truly essential difference.' We imagine our studio as one of those international cities, a port of entry through which these materials pass on their way to their final destinations. Sometimes it's sad to see them go. But then we turn around and find discover more.