If Russia were still ruled by tsars, Jay Strongwater’s crystal-encrusted creations would undoubtedly be used throughout the castle. In fact, the company actually has a store in Moscow, as well as Dubai and in London at Harrods.
Jay Strongwater, whose birth name is Jay Feinberg, was born in 1960. The Strongwater is an Anglicized version of his mother’s maiden name, Starkwasser. He went to the Rhode Island School of Design before he started designing jewelry when he was a sophomore. By the ripe old age of 22, his pieces were being sold in Neiman’s, Bloomingdales, I Magnin, and Bonwit Teller.
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In the early ’80s, Strongwater started designing jewelry for Oscar de la Renta’s runway collections. “What an incredible designer,” Strongwater says. “Working with Oscar really pushed me to much more ornate, baroque, dressier, evening-type jewelry. I started to learn more about working with the crystals and the stones.”
Then one day in 1995, while he fashioning a pair of earrings, he started “playing around with the craftsmanship and the materials I like to use and I made my first picture frame,” he says. “Everyone was so intrigued by it that I decided to give it out to buyers and editors that holiday season. People thought it was great and that I should try to put together a collection. The idea of working larger was intriguing to me. And, not only the picture frames. I started making boxes and clocks. But it always rooted in my history of jewelry making.”
Today the company sells Swarovski and semi-precious jewel-encrusted everything, from frames to figurines and fireplace screens, compacts to clocks, Christmas ornaments to perfume atomizers, and more. A sampling of products and prices: A pillar candleholder ($1,400), a gold panne velvet pillows bedecked with crystal flowers ($695), stag head wine stopper ($225).
Sales are brisk. Strongwater estimates they will be up 15 to 20 percent this year. The biggest sellers: the frames and figurines. In 2015, the designer says they are hoping to add lamps to the product line.
The process of creating a Strongwater treasure is complex. First the piece goes from the metalsmith in Rhode Island to the stone setting and enameling in a town in upstate New York. “We keep inventing new colorations and new techniques of enamel, whether it is layers of enamel or translucent enamel,” Strongwater says. “One of the things we pride ourselves on is very unusual colors.” Frames require a week to complete; a fireplace screen can run up to eight weeks.
The company started selling Christmas ornaments in 2001. “Unfortunately, the workshop in Poland we were working with went out of business,” he says. “We took a three-year break. Then we started up again in 2011. We work with a wonderful old family workshop in Poland that has the ability to blow this glass ornaments, to add the glitter and our trademark Swarovski crystals.”
It all comes back to those crystals. “I have a love affair with the Swarovski crystals, the colors, the cut, the clarity,” Strongwater adds. “At the same time, I love using semi-precious stones. In the peacock piece, we have tiger eye, lapis, and jade. I think that is interesting to combine them.”
When pressed, Strongwater demurred on naming a favorite piece. Clearly it’s the creating that has captured his heart.
“Some pieces are a little longer than a year in development,” he says. When that piece comes in in the metal and we are able to start painting it with the enamel and placing the crystals, there is nothing better than that. It is the ultimate to see a piece that you have been dreaming about come to life. That is what inspires us each season and why we do two collections a year. When it all comes together at the last minute is really great.”
