[title subtitle=”words: Marla Cantrell
images: courtesy Ivy Hagedorn”][/title]
Not so long ago, Ivy Hagedorn was a retail manager for a Cracker Barrel in Kingman, Arizona. It was a job she enjoyed, and the thirty-five-year-old had been with the company since working at one of their Missouri locations during her college years. But two things happened while she was in Kingman: a long-term relationship fell apart, and her father unexpectedly died.
Ivy rushed home to Joplin to be with her mother, and in the weeks that followed she made a decision. She wanted to move back, and so she did, in the spring of 2012. Of course she’d need a job, and Cracker Barrel didn’t have any openings in the area. She planned to look, but her mom took her aside and gently suggested that maybe she should slow down, take a break, and see what happened.
In Arizona, she’d spent her downtime creating collages, large scale paintings, and mixed media pieces. Her mother, an antiques dealer, would send Ivy care packages filled with treasures like tiny glass bottles, or pieces of old jewelry she’d found at auctions and estate sales, and those would find their way into Ivy’s work. When she moved, she brought all these things along. Soon after, Ivy’s aunt offered her a space for a studio, and she got to work.
By the summer of 2012, Ivy’s attention had turned to jewelry making. She’d taken art in high school from a teacher who encouraged her students to try every medium, and during that time Ivy learned to solder and make polymer beads. She looked in her old printer’s cabinet that held the old rhinestone pieces she’d been collecting, and inspiration hit.
She started making one-of-a-kind necklaces, using pieces of old jewelry, adding pearls at times, and tiny antique light bulbs, old keys, or pieces of fishing lures. Her friends fell in love with her eclectic work. So in the fall she headed to an arts and crafts festival in Neosho, Missouri. Her jewelry was a big hit, and Ivy realized that she may have found a way to make a living without ever punching a time clock again. Up until that point she believed she’d eventually go back to the corporate world, which seemed like the most responsible thing to do. “I finally decided that life was way too short to always do what you’re supposed to,” Ivy says.
And so she came up with a name for her company. She called it Tarnished Charm. Ivy set up an Etsy store, and a Facebook page. Before long, she was thinking about jewelry all the time. Ivy stayed up late, working on designs, crafting new pieces. She kept a notebook by her bed so she could make quick sketches if an idea struck her in the middle of the night.
She started adding new lines, like hair clips made from old cuff links and screw-back earrings. Ivy scoured antique shops, estate sales and auctions, and started buying vintage rhinestones online. She grew to love dress clips that were invented in the 1920s, mostly sold in sets of two, and became popular in the 1930s. The clips were often ornate, many in the Art Deco style, and women would wear them, particularly on corners of square necklines. When dress styles changed, the clips lost favor, although Ivy is still flummoxed as to why, since the pieces were so versatile. Women wore them on chains as necklaces, and even on hats.
Finding dress clips, and all the other pieces that find their way into her designs, is not easy, but Ivy thinks it’s worth it. “I don’t use reproductions,” Ivy says. “Ever. There are so many things squirreled away in people’s homes, things people are throwing away. Why do we need to buy all these things made in China, when we have all this great stuff here that we can reuse? I buy a lot of things that need to be repaired because those pieces probably wouldn’t ever get used or appreciated again. Maybe it’s a broach that’s missing some rhinestones, and I have to go to my collection and refit the missing stones.
“I work on an old watchmaker’s bench from the 1800s, and I have a table for my metal work. When I go to shows now, I’ll take a huge, heavy bag full of stuff I’m working on, and I’ll work at the shows. People have literally bought things off the table, as soon as I’ve finished. The shows are a lot of physical work, and long days, but there’s nothing like connecting with people, even if they don’t buy. The comments I get from people are almost overwhelmingly positive, so it’s nice.”
She’s even had people who say they can spot a Tarnished Charm necklace when they see someone else wearing it. That’s a great feeling for Ivy. She has many repeat customers who bring their friends to her shows, or send them to shop online. And she has others who want custom pieces made. “People will give me their mother’s pieces, or their grandmother’s, and I’ll turn it into something for them. That’s special, to take something that was sitting in their jewelry box for years and turn it into something they could wear every day. One of my favorites was a lady in Joplin who literally brought me a giant bag of her grandma’s and mom’s jewelry and said, ‘Do what you want with it.’ She wanted a lot of necklaces. I made one memory necklace with all these little pieces on it, like a charm necklace. When she opened it up, she started tearing up. All the pieces on it meant so much to her, and she hadn’t realized I’d be able to work with all those bits and baubles.”
It’s that kind of challenge, and that kind of reward, that keeps her excited about her work. Ivy is doing exactly what she wants, every single day. She looks back at the decisions she made. In high school she considered going to art school, but she chose academics instead, becoming an honors international studies/political science major. As graduation loomed, she considered grad school, but the thought of writing paper after paper didn’t appeal to her. She was already working for Cracker Barrel and they offered her a management position that took her to Kansas City and on to Kingman.
Her work in the retail shops at the restaurant chain served her well. She can set up one heck of a display at arts and crafts shows, she knows how to market, and she’s overcome her natural shyness in dealing with people.
Now that she’s come to this place in her life, all those seemingly unconnected events suddenly look like a well thought out plan. And each step eventually led her right back home, where she’s undeniably happy. She’s so glad she took the chance, and that her mother encouraged her to take a break, to just let life happen for a little while, at a time when that’s exactly what she needed. Ivy loves that every day she wakes up with a new idea, a new design, a new way to make a piece of jewelry that will bring joy to the person who sees it and decides she just can’t live without it.
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To see more of Ivy’s work, visit Tarnished Charm on Facebook and Etsy.
