Designer Lizzie Mandler, who started in the business at the age of 16, has launched a new collection, called Liquid Gold, and opened her first retail store in LA last year. She sure has been a busy bee!
Lizzie creates handmade effortless and desirable jewelry. She has always been true to her aesthetic as well. Since I started Made of Jewelry, there hasn’t been a collection or piece I haven’t liked myself. You may also be familiar with her signature Knife Edge rings.
As the name of the new collection, Liquid Gold, suggests, the pieces are chunkier (with lots of gold) and smoother, taking on a more sculptural form (hence why I said ‘chunkier’). Lizzie has been exploring the ways in which the knife-edge silhouette can be pushed into new shapes/forms. By distorting the clean lines, she creates new points of interest and expanded planes of gold, changing how the eye perceives the shape. This collection highlights how diamonds dance along these new lines and how wrinkles embrace center stones, offering a more expressive and sculptural version of Lizzie’s classic designs.

Q&A with Lizzie Mandler:
Can you describe your journey into the jewelry industry business?
I first discovered my passion for jewelry design when I was 12. I got my ears pierced much later than my friends, and I was so excited to find the perfect pair of earrings for my middle school graduation. I searched for months and couldn’t find what I had envisioned so my mom brought me to a local bead store where you could design and make your own jewelry. I made that first pair of earrings, and quickly started making and selling beaded jewelry. When I was 16, I took my first wax carving class and pretty much decided then and there that I wanted to pursue jewelry design. I spent the next 6 years training as a bench jeweler, and when I graduated USC I launched my brand.
What inspired you to become a jewelry designer?
We had an heirloom necklace in my family, an Elsa Peretti diamonds by the yard single stone necklace that my dad bought my mom when they first got married. My mom gave it to my sister when she turned 13, and my dad bought her a new one. I anxiously awaited my turn to receive that necklace, and when I turned 13 my sister passed it down to me, my mom passed hers on to my sister and my dad bought my mom a new one. I wore that necklace with so much pride, it signified not just my coming of age but a secret rite of passage in my family, like the key to the club of being a grown up Mandler woman- or at least that’s what it felt like at 13. That necklace taught me the unique ability of jewelry to be both timeless and time specific, to hold our most cherished memories, and become unique and personal symbols that we wear on our bodies. I became really fascinated by jewelry’s ability to hold such powerful meaning, and as I experienced the sudden loss of my Mom at age 16, unbeknownst to me jewelry became my language, the medium I sought out to process and grieve, and connect with my Mom. I quickly fell in love with the art form, and proclaimed to my dad at 17 that I had ‘Found what I wanted to do for the rest of my life’- some combination of deep love for this industry and a healthy dose of teenage stubbornness have led me to where I am today!

How do you stay creative and innovative in a field that’s always evolving?
I try to constantly feed my creativity- especially in non-jewelry mediums. I think when your passion and creative outlet also become your livelihood, it can get really easy to lose some of your creativity in the pressure to make a living, or keep up with others in your industry, or simply run a full time business. I try to create in mediums that are unrelated to that pressure. I like to do figure drawing, or throw pottery- or explore new mediums, and I usually never show anyone the work I create during this time, it’s completely private, pressure free and purely for the exercise of expression. It feeds the artist in me, who is sometimes overwhelmed and stifled by the business side of things.
How was it like to find your signature style/what defines your work?
Because I started designing so young, my style has drastically evolved, and grown up with me over the last 19 years. It was an organic evolution that got me to where we are today, but a few things have always remained the same. I have always been inspired by memory, specifically the memories I have of my mom and grandmother’s jewelry, usually from old pictures of my mom in her 20’s. Many of my early pieces come from reinterpreting what I think those pieces looked like (sadly, most of her jewelry was stolen in a home invasion in the 80s, so it was always left to my imagination to interpret the pictures I had of her wearing jewelry). The second is the knife edge silhouette, my mom had a knife edge wedding band, and a hammered knife edge band was the 2nd piece of jewelry I carved in wax. Since that original knife edge band, the knife edge silhouette has creeped its way into almost 90% of the pieces I make, often in small details like the shape of my prongs. Anchoring my designs in the inspiration of memories and nostalgia, and continuing to incorporate my signature knife edge silhouette allows me to grow and evolve the collection, and create capsules that are wildly different than previous work, while always remaining familiar and cohesive.
Can you share some insights into the business side of being a jewelry designer?
I think people (myself included) completely underestimate the challenges of the business portion of a fine jewelry company, and how much of your time you will spend in the craft vs in the business side. It’s an incredibly cash flow challenged business model, especially now with the climbing prices of gold, and requires you to wear a lot of different hats as a business owner. Just now, 13 years in, do I feel like I’ve finally started to find some balance between the business and the creative side.


Can you tell us a bit about the inspo behind the Liquid Collection?
I am so in love with our Liquid Gold Collection- It was inspired by a recent trip to London where I spent about an hour in front of a marble sculpture from the 1800’s by Hamo Thornycroft called Lot’s Wife. I am always so taken by marble sculptures featuring intricately carved tapestry, in this case, a dress so beautifully draped and paper thin you could see the details of her knee underneath. I was so in awe of how expressive the fabric was, how fluid it felt, in such a concrete material. When I got back, I started to play with sculpting clay, and how I could turn my signature knife edge into an expressive form still within the constraints of the silhouette. I wanted to use gold in the way Thornycroft (and many other prolific marble sculptors) used marble, making its solid form morph into something flowy with movement and expression, and using stones to accentuate the curves and wrinkles created.
What made you want to open a retail store?
I felt like it was the missing link- I wanted my customers to be able to step into a physical world that completes the narrative of the brand I’ve built. I wanted to create a home for the brand, one that I could welcome clients into, and build community around. I think especially in a post pandemic world, clients want a tangible shopping experience, something that adds to the story of the purchase beyond just clicking a button online, and I think that is especially true for such an emotional purchase like fine jewelry.
You can find all Lizzie Mandler pieces online or in-store.
All images thanks to Lizzie Mandler Fine Jewelry
Edits/collages by MoJ