Although humans are innately more the same than we are different, it is our uniqueness that allows us to create diverse ecosystems with those around us that thrive off of varying strengths. Our EMBLM partnership is no different. Although we have marveled at how well we get along and feel so lucky that a true friendship has developed alongside our business partnership, our differences are what make our partnership so strong. An example when it comes to the two of us is, Emily is very good at math and Mariko clams up at the sight of numbers (we laugh about this often). Our Numeral Collection definitely would not exist if it weren’t for Emily’s love of numbers. In order to share anything further, we need to start at the very beginning, where that love began.
Emily grew up in a small town of around 500 in the rural coal country of Pennsylvania. Excelling in school in a place with very little diversity, math seemed like a subject that acted as an equalizer. To quote Mean Girls, a pivotal movie for our generation (insert laughs), “Yeah I like math… Because it’s the same in every country.” There was something beautiful about the fact that applied math was something everyone around the world could agree on. Like words, numbers have the power to give order to ideas, symbolize occasions, mark time in space, and warrant a feeling. Each design in our Numeral Collection represents a number and the way in which it is interpreted in the world.
Having no arts institutions in her town, Emily fed her curiosity about the world outside its borders with fashion and lifestyle magazines and was drawn to design, art and architecture. Given the lack of resources immediately available to her, she always put art on a very high pedestal. Perhaps given her admiration for something that seemed out of reach, it was extremely hard for her to accept that she had any artistic talent of her own.
Upon moving to L.A. she found a career in fashion retail, working for designers she admired but with the knowledge that she wanted to create something of her own. Sometime in 2018, the year before EMBLM was incorporated, while going through a period of feeling lost and directionless in life, her husband Conner suggested she try and express herself creatively. Although surrounded by friends who had successfully made careers out of practicing their art, she still wasn’t sure she had something to offer in that realm. She had always wanted to draw, but wasn’t comfortable with free flowing sketching. Math had always allowed her to keep things very precise while expressing her vision, so she got out her protractor and began with drawing geometric shapes. From those early sketches, an entire collection began to unfold. Each numeral pendant she designed contained a geometric design surrounding an onyx center stone, with a specific number of diamonds to represent the value each pendant was inspired by.
The process of creating her first collection, “helped me release some of the worry about what other people think and required much more vulnerability than I’m normally comfortable sharing. Having a creative outlet has allowed me to break out of the box I had built for myself of what I was allowed to do or express. It’s helped me share more fearlessly and be brave enough to show different sides of myself.”
Since those early designs, Emily has continued coming up with new ideas (numbers are infinite after all) and the Numeral Collection has expanded significantly. There are currently multiple numeral pendants in the works that we can’t wait to share with you. Stay tuned!
Photo credit: ESQUELETO