Welcome to Schmuckspringa

Rumspringa: Pennsylvania German pronunciation: [ˈrʊmˌʃprɪŋə]), also spelled Rumschpringe or Rumshpringa, is a rite of passage during adolescence, translated from originally Palatine German and other Southwest German dialects to English as "jumping or hopping around", used in some Amish communities.

Amish adolescents may engage in rebellious behavior, resisting or defying parental norms. In many cultures, enforcement may be relaxed, and misbehavior tolerated or overlooked to a degree.

Schmuck: German for jewelry

Schmuckspringa: A blog about jewelry while hopping about the planet, and quite possibly engaging in a bit of misbehavior along the way.

Hello and welcome to Schmuckspringa. Thank you for being here. I am Anna, an American jewelry designer and maker living and working in Berlin, Germany since 2017. After working for 15 years in the film industry in New York and travelling voraciously between jobs, I hit maximium burnout in 2016. Jewelry had been a side project for many years, and moving to a bureaucratic heavy country where I did not speak the language and knew no one to build a small creative business felt like the change I needed. More than 7 years in, everyday is still a new adventure.

This blog was originally conceived to tell the journey of Metal Atelier becoming more sustainable. The reality is, there are many brands doing it better than we are, and it felt too limiting. Then it was the quest to get as close to the source of materials and actually understand the socio political ramifications of stone and metal sourcing. Unfortunately, I am not a field gemologist and do not have the resources to casually hop from mine to mine and try to explain and solve the problems that international NGO’s have failed to.

What I am is a jewelry designer on my second career trying to make sense of growing a small business in a foreign country and trying to not fuck things up too much, often with Mötorhead in the background and a glass of wine in my hand.

Schmuckspringa will be an evolving project. There will be some international hopping about under the umbrella of jewelry education, as open of a subject as that is. There will be studio and client stories. There will be Sauvignon Blanc. There will not be Amazon affiliate links.

If there is a particular subject you would like me to tackle, please reach out. The upcoming posts planned will cover a recent trip to the Bangkok Gem and Jewelry Fair, the Chantheburi Gem Market, and how they both tie back to a trip to Myanmar 10 years ago, and one of the most fun collaborations I have done to date.

Hope to see you on the journey!

XoXo,
Anna