Linda May Studio



Linda May Studio

About The Artist

Linda May • Philadelphia, PA
Jewelry • WHOLESALE AVAILABLE • CUSTOM COMMISSIONS

I make exuberant textile jewelry. It's jewelry with attitude, for women who want a big look, a lot of necklace. I love color you can feel. My Philadelphia studio clatters with trays of bright beads and bins of warm felt. With needle and thread, I meticulously hand stitch each tiny glass bead to the felt. I make the big silver chain by hand.



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Q&A with the Artist

Tell us how your work is made.

It’s no accident I make textile jewelry. I’ve been sewing all my life. In high school I could start a dress in the morning and wear it that night on a date. I taught myself metalsmithing to give the textile jewelry heft and presence.


What makes you passionate about the medium you work with?

Felt is luscious. It really holds color, and you want to touch it. When you sew little glass beads to the big felt rounds, you get the pleasure of hard and soft, big and small, pattern on pattern.

What is something unique about you or your practice?

I’m a Ph.D. anthropologist. I did fieldwork in India, where the textiles are intense and people combine strange bright colors in ways that surprised me. To quote the legendary Vogue editor Diana Vreeland, “Hot pink is the navy blue of India.”