BANKS. Designs



BANKS. Designs

About The Artist

Chicago, IL
Jewelry - Metal • WHOLESALE AVAILABLE • CUSTOM COMMISSIONS

On the surface Banks Designs is about creating confident, timeless, distinct jewelry for the person who beats to their own drum. But it's more than that to me. This business and my craft are my personal commitment to happiness, joy, and myself. A daily practice in saying yes, trusting my gut, and finding myself through jewelry. I take inspiration from my daily life, history, and stones and use it to hand fabricate pieces in gold plated brass, vermeil, and gold-fill with semi-precious stones.



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Chicago, Illinois

Q&A

Tell us how your work is made.

I make all of my work by hand in my home studio in Chicago, IL. For parts of the production process that cannot be performed safely in my studio, I work with local family-owned businesses.


What makes you passionate about the medium you work with?

From ogling my grandmother's jewelry collection, to picking out pieces for my mom, and watching my father don himself with pinky rings and bolo ties, I've always been surrounded by jewelry. I've also always had a fascination with science and rocks. Jewelry is where all of those passions converged.

What is something unique about you or your practice?

I like to make collections that have ties to larger cultural influences and personal experiences. Those would be inkblot testing and a fascination with psychology in the Rorschach collection and art deco, and Black history with the Revelry collection. My instinct is also to gravitate away from "fussiness" so I usually take more detailed shapes and patterns and strip them down into something simpler that still speaks to the original inspiration.