Hyde Park Village, Tampa
Albisia
Albisia is a jewelry store in Hyde Park Village, Tampa. Everything in it is chosen in daylight and made by hand at one bench in our studio, most of it by one person, and much of it only once. The pieces are meant to be worn every day and kept for a long time, which is a simple idea and a surprisingly demanding one.
The Designer
Albisia grew up in Albania in the years after communism fell, with the stories of the years before it still fresh in every house: a country where there was very little of anything, and where saying what you thought was not a safe habit. When her family left for Florida, they left with what families leave with, which is not much, and a great deal of hope. The idea was a new life. For her it was also the idea of freedom, and that has never been an abstraction. Making things and saying what you think are the same right, and she holds both as sacred.
She studied structural and environmental engineering at the University of South Florida. Engineering taught her structure: how a thing carries its own weight, where it wants to break, how little material you actually need if you put it in the right place. She was already making jewelry by then, taking pieces apart and putting them together in ways nobody had asked for. She has never stopped looking at the world with both minds at once, the engineer's and the artist's. It shows in the work.
She started selling at shows, one table at a time. The store in Hyde Park Village opened on December 11, 2011. The bench is not in it. The bench is at the studio, and it has not moved much since.
Most pieces arrive in her head already finished. The bench is where they catch up.
The Method
Every piece starts as a stone in her hand and a structure in her head. Before it is pretty it has to stand up, hold a stone, survive a doorframe and come back from the beach. Sometimes the sketch comes first. Just as often the piece goes straight from her mind to the bench, made exactly as she imagined it, and it is right the first time. She wears a new piece herself for a while before it goes in the case, and very little is ever set aside.
Materials and the Route
Gold. Always recycled, always cast and finished at the bench. Diamonds, emeralds, sapphires and rubies, from vendors we have trusted for years.
Every year we go looking. Istanbul first, because it is on the way to everywhere, then the Aegean and the islands: the markets, the museums, the patterns cut into old stone and woven into old cloth. Some of the best pieces in the store started as a drawing on the back of a ferry ticket.
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The coin pieces come from that route. We find replicas of ancient gold coins, most of them in Istanbul, take a mold, and cast them in gold at the bench. Athena, Helios, Artemis, Zeus.
First the stone. Then everything that has to hold it.
Made in Tampa
Everything is made at the bench in our Tampa studio and sold at the store in Hyde Park Village. Fifteen years, thousands of pieces. The doors have stayed open through hurricanes and through the quiet weeks, because a neighborhood store is a promise you keep in person. If a piece ever needs repair, it comes back to the bench that made it. We stand behind our jewelry.
A small selection is carried by Nordstrom. All of it is still made at this bench.
The store is at 1605 W Snow Circle.
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Commitments
Every piece, at one bench in Tampa.
Repaired at the bench that made it. We stand behind every piece.
Many pieces are one of a kind. When they are gone they are gone.
All of our gold is recycled. Stones come from vendors we have trusted for years.
The Business Side
Somebody has to answer the emails, argue with the shipping company and remember the sales tax. That is Ali. He also wrote this page, which is why it is longer than it needs to be and says almost nothing about him. Albisia would have made it shorter.