Artist Spotlight: Christina Kober
Crafting a Business
Christina Kober Designs began as a hobby, essentially to help me learn about my father’s business. My dad owns JFF Jeweler Supply, a jeweler supply store in Atlanta, Georgia. I began working for him when I was 14, knowing nothing about the field; it was just a summer and holiday job to fill my closet with clothes.
After graduating college, I continued working at JFF to supplement my income. But this time I found I was curious about the process of making jewelry and decided to begin taking classes. I was like a sponge; I would ask customers and coworkers questions, I would read every book I could get my hands on and experiment with various jewelry techniques at home. Soon, I found myself recommending what tools to buy and providing my own insights into crafting and fabricating jewelry to our customers.
Building Foundations
In my younger teen years I played around with macramé and even had a couple of soldering & engraving lessons with my father, but nothing really stuck. In 2005 I started taking community classes at Spruill Center for the Arts in Atlanta, and this was when I began learning more about the skills I use today.
Inspired Work
My inspiration comes from a lot of different things but four come to mind in particular: tell a story, texture, form, and color.
- TELL A STORY: My first pieces I ever made, the fortune cookie necklace & lariat and handwritten initials, were designed from the desire to make jewelry that was personal to the wearer. Something that you can tell your story from. The fortune cookies have fortune messages on them that can be customized, customers can put special messages that mean something to them and wear it close to their heart. The jewelry I make is meant to be mixed and matched with each other to reflect who you are.
- TEXTURE: Inspiration also comes from the materials that I work with. The techniques you can use to manipulate the metal to imitate textures are incredible. Crafting jewelry is not only visual but a very tactile process, and the juxtaposition of texture is very interesting to me. I love the feel of a soft cotton texture next to a shiny smooth finish. This slight variation of the texture is subtle but effective, to not only the eye but the touch.
- FORM: Metal seems like a very stiff, immobile material. With fabric, it curls and wrinkles at the slightest touch; while you can poke and tap with your hands and metal just sits there. But with heat and hammers, metal moves, stretches, and conforms into magnificent shapes. Sometimes I’m really astounded what can happen when you just play around.
- COLOR: I love that gold and silver are limited in color; they are amazing neutral tones that can be worn with anything. They also have such an intense contradiction to one another. On the one hand, you have this warm yellow radiance from gold and on the other, silver is this stark white glow. Their contrast is incredible alone or with a pop of color from a gem set in the metal.
Craft is a Community
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