Girlfriends Leave Courtroom for the Creativity of the Kiln
Liz Price isn’t totally pleased with her clay creation, a flower with five pointy petals. So like a carefree kid she mashes the blossom, pounding her right hand as if slamming down a gavel.
“If only I could have done this to a few people I knew in my other life,” says Price, a former administrative judge. Standing nearby, nodding, is her best friend, Myra Amorosi, a former criminal lawyer.
The women, both retired and living in the Los Angeles area, have been girlfriends for more than 40 years since meeting in Washington, D.C., during their college days. Now their friendship and shared love for flowers finds them on a new adventure: an at-home jewelry-making venture called Chiuri, Sicilian for “flower.” But the new fashion partnership is less about making the pages of InStyle than it is about a bond between two women who are like sisters in their hearts, and in conversations even finish each other’s sentences.
Liz: “We have an unwritten pact that we are there for each other. That’s all I want out of a friend and that’s the kind of friend I want to be. So what we do with the clay is very secondary.”
Myra: “We really are intimately connected with the private parts of our lives. Whether the jewelry takes off or doesn’t ... “
Liz: “ ... it doesn’t matter. But it has changed my life. Myra, you know, we were geared toward books, law, citations ...”
Myra: “Courtroom battles ... “
Liz: “And making jewelry is so different from what we’ve ever done before. For me, it’s just nice to go into a corner like that--and with a block of clay, of all things, in your hand that ... “
Myra: “ ... you can roll up, mush and start over again.”
Liz: “And that’s so very unlike life.”
About the only thing they knew about jewelry back in their law career days was wearing it with their power suits. Price earned her law degree in 1965 when, she says, “it was not fashionable for women to attend law school. There were four women in a class of 180 students and all four of us graduated. Only 35 men did.”
“Law was never my passion, let alone to my liking,” says Price who has been a judge on an Indiana commission and an IRS attorney. After she and her husband, Jerry, also a lawyer, moved to California in 1969, she taught law in Orange County and later served as dean of a Van Nuys paralegal school.
Twelve years ago--”way too late in my life,” she says--she discovered her real passion: “to make things, to create stuff for people and occasions.” That was when she started Por Favor, a party and novelty-making business she operates out of her home.
Amorosi, in contrast, couldn’t wait to take on a case after passing the California bar in 1977. She practiced law for 22 years until her mother died three years ago. As Amorosi was flying back to California from the funeral, she had an epiphany.
“I had this terrible guilt about this terrible thing I’d done. I had taken my two sons away from my mother who was living back East and she wasn’t a part of their lives. And I swore that wasn’t going to happen to me and my grandchildren--not that I even see them as much as I want to now,” she says about the children who live in Southern California.
Near retirement in her government job, Amorosi quit, forfeiting benefits such as lifetime health insurance. Her second husband, Edward, a neurologist, told her, “‘It’s not about money; do what you want to do.’ And I’m doing exactly that. My world then, with law, is not my world now. I’m making jewelry with my best friend.”
Their business took seed less than two years ago after Amorosi could not find a particular glass necklace for a friend while on a trip to Murano, Italy. So she bought miniature glass flowers instead, and made a necklace with them. Her pal loved it. So did Price, who knew right then she and Amorosi should go into the jewelry biz.
Liz: “We are self-taught. We didn’t even ...”
Myra: “know where to buy the clay.”
Liz: “I bought a book, ‘Beginning Ceramics.’ It had about 20 pages in it. I brought Myra over some clay and said ...”
Myra: “ ‘Make me some pansies.’ But I didn’t have any tools.”
Liz: “ ‘Go get a kitchen knife and a roller pin,’ I told her.”
Myra: “True. And then she said ...
Liz: “”Make me some calla lilies.’ And she did it.”
Myra: “Trial and error, I say.”
Whether it’s in Price’s living room in Hollywood or Amorosi’s Marina del Rey garage, they casually handcraft porcelain jewelry--from clay to finished glazed and painted product--and adorn the pieces with Austrian crystal, glass beads, semiprecious stones and antique clasps. Their traveling kiln is almost always firing up one of the many one-of-a-kind pieces that take two to three days to make and sell for $150 through word-of-mouth and on their Web site (www.chiuri.com).
They love flowers. Real petals are patterns for the big, chunky clay posies that have become popular draws at charity events. Their donated necklaces have brought in as much as $250 apiece from bidders at silent auction fund-raisers for nonprofit groups such as the Boys & Girls Club of Santa Clarita Valley.
Price’s daughter, Jennifer--their fashion maven--is a publicist who wore a stunning Swarovski crystal-embellished black flower on a 17-inch necklace while working with the media on the red carpet at the Emmys earlier this year. Her necklace caught the attention of many who have since placed orders.
Television’s Judge Judy Sheindlin is a fan and even suggested to Price that she mold her a smaller strand of flowers because even though The Judge is as tough as The Rock, she’s a petite woman.
Price wasn’t about to say “I object.”
Liz: “Now, we’ve got the science of all this down pat.”
Myra: “But I’m still a little ticked at you for not being more interested in my calla lilies. I think they’re beautiful.”
Liz: “They are.”
Myra: “Thanks. See, you can’t hold a grudge with a friend. You have to be forgiving.”
Liz: “And you have to give as much as you expect to get.”
Myra: “And you can’t have demands on friends. You don’t own friends.”
Liz: “That’s right.”
Myra: “Right. After all, I have no idea how much longer I’ll be here.”
Liz: “Myra if you stick me with those necklaces and leave me by myself--I’ll never forgive you.”
Myra: “You will. You’re my friend.”
Liz: “That, I am.”
