Energy Sparks a Lot of Diverse Creativity

Claudia Grau’s Melrose Avenue shop is like a house forever under decorator’s siege. One month Grau may style a collection that covers almost every surface of her small store and ranges from coats to hair bows. A month later, she may have changed every surface to something else.

For awhile, she was buying up bushels of old kimonos, tearing them apart and restyling them into blazers, sheaths and bags. Then she ran out of kimonos.

Once she fell in love with a red plaid fabric that she worked with for a few weeks. She even made hats of it before she got tired. “I go off on tangents,” she says.

Inspired by Guatemalan Jewelry

Not long ago, Grau recalls, a friend’s uncle brought her two big boxes of broken jewelry. Just before that, she bought “a truckload” of old beads intended to be made into necklaces and bracelets. She called this stash “a treasure trove,” and started making a collection of jewelry from it.

The styles are large scale and inspired by Guatemalan designs. “I’m like the women there who sit at the side of the road making jewelry,” she says.

Grau’s shapes suggest beetles and spiders. Everything is one of a kind. “My customers will just have to trust me,” she says.

She’s made jewelry in the past, then stopped, the way she does with all her designs. But lately, she even makes jewelry at home after work.

“My nervous energy is turning into something productive,” she says. Prices of her earrings, pins and bracelets range from about $35 to $60.