Kate Jones is the designer behind jewellery brand, Ursa Major. After stints in New York and San Francisco, Kate and her husband Chris re-settled on the coast of Maine, where she lives and works from her home studio on the same small cove where she grew up on the Damariscotta River. Kate recently returned from an artists’ residence program in the Sicilian coastal town of Tusa, where she took her creative mind beyond jewellery and lived like a Sicilian.
Your work is heavily influenced by the sea, tell us about your relationship with it.
I have lived on the sea all of my life. As a child, my father took the whole family (including my three-month-old brother) to live aboard our sailboat, Ursa Major. We spent 19 months sailing down the eastern Caribbean islands all the way to Venezuela. In the subsequent years, we would spend anywhere from weeks to months exploring Tahiti, Belize, Honduras, Guatemala, the Bahamas. There’s nothing like arriving at your destination by boat. But when I’m standing at the shore, or sitting aboard, I am grounded and reset at the same time, perhaps depending on what I most need at the time. The sea calms me in a way nothing else does: falling asleep with salt on my skin, the quiet shush of waves on a shore through an open window, the rhythmic sound of them hitting the side of a boat while you rest inside, the gentle rocking, the full moon’s reflection shimmering, the sounds of halyards clinking against masts. It's the singularity and fluidity of it that influences my work the most. Sometimes I’m not exactly sure of my work’s specific ties to it; I may not see them because I aim for more obtuse translations of things rather than literal, but I know its spirit is embedded in me, and therefore the work.
Kate wears the LM Poplin LS Shirt.
You split your time between New York City and Maine – what do both places give you?
They both fill a crucial balance in my life. Maine is where I live, but I’m not sure I could make that work without regularly dipping my toes back into my former home. I love the pace of NYC but I don’t think I could live full time in the city again. The expression “in a New York minute” is a real thing; it offers you the ability to get ten thousand things done in one day, on the ground, and when I’m there, I do. I eat it up. I walk everywhere, I multi-task like a mad woman, take meetings back to back, run into a million people, soak up the spontaneity of the place. For five furious days every couple of months, I recharge that side of me. But the moment I get back to Maine I am thrilled. I live down a long dirt driveway, on a property filled with pine trees and perched above a quiet cove and I’m convinced that it is being surrounded by this much space and quiet that allows me to operate at the level I do. Some people think you can’t operate a business as well if it’s not in the city, but I think perhaps you can do it even better.
Kate wears the LM Poplin V-Neck Dress.
It seems there are some paradoxes in your work and life – between busy and quiet, subtlety and distinction, tradition and modernity. Where does this come from and how does it manifest in Ursa Major?
Oh I love this question! I have learnt that by striking the balance between such things, you create the space for people to make their own relationships to the piece. In a sense, I’m making them relatable by making them suggestive of different elements, yet never specifically one thing. Some pieces are more specific in their references, but ultimately I try to abstract them in some way that leaves them living between old and new, architectural and organic, detailed and minimal. The relationship one has to a piece of jewellery is just as important, if not even more so, than the jewellery itself and a suggestion is all it takes to create that dialogue between a wearer and the piece. Perhaps it’s even the difference of a suggestion versus an overt statement that makes something feel even more personal.
Kate wears the LM Poplin Cami and the LM Poplin LS Shirt.
Sustainability is integral to your practice. How do you pursue this endeavour?
By never assuming I have all of the answers and insisting on continually doing better. It needs to be an all encompassing way of operating, rather than just a “ticking the boxes” checklist. I generally don’t broadcast sustainability because fundamentally it is where we should all start, rather than a sales pitch. But I also appreciate that without talking about it we may not give consumers and others the tools to ask the right questions around “how can I be sustainable?”. If I tell someone that I know the name of the miner and stonecutter of this sapphire, or that we built a house insulated with straw, it’s to share the possibility of a standard we can hold ourselves to. But I also think that two of the most under discussed aspects of sustainability are the decision to stay small which allows you to have an intimate understanding of your environment (the conditions under which you and anyone else who provides for your business work in), as well as limiting the amount of goods you put into the world, and to design, aesthetically, with permanence in mind, not a passing trend. This is the foundation on which every other detailed aspect of my sustainability practice is built on.
Kate wears the LM Poplin V-Neck Dress.
When it comes to fashion, how would you describe your style?
A little undone and just feminine enough.
Tell us about your artist in residency in Sicily? How long were you there and what did an average day look like?
The program is called Officina Stamperia Del Notaio and it’s set in this tiny coastal Sicilian town called Tusa. The residents are pretty much the only tourists, which, given the tourist scene in Sicily this summer, was a complete gift. It was a total Sicilian summer immersion: coffee, swim, arancina, gelato, aperitif, and repeat. I swam each day with a gaggle of locals and one of my fellow residents, Edson Colón Aguirre, who took these photos so beautifully. My days were mostly spent chatting with fellow artists and locals (even though I was only just beginning to grasp Italian), sketching, reacquainting myself with photography via a borrowed vintage 35mm camera, and figuring out dinner. We cooked for ourselves half the time and I was fortunate to be surrounded by artists who also loved to cook. The beauty of the program is it’s entirely open and self disciplined. The time and space are there for you to do what you need creatively. For me, that was the freedom to be wholly present in a foreign place and to use my creative mind beyond jewellery.
Kate wears the LM Poplin LS Shirt and the LM Poplin V-Neck Dress.
What must-see places and things to do, see and eat would you recommend?
What I saw beyond Tusa was fairly limited, but I passed through Palermo, Cefalù, Santo Stefano, Taormina, and Catania. I am always put off by crowds, and being that it was June, it was crowded almost everywhere. Taormina and Cefalù were nuts and made us recognize what a gift it was to be based in a town free of tourists. Sure we didn’t have all of the options of shopping, nightlife, or restaurants, but we didn’t need it. I enjoyed Palermo and Catania, despite the crowds. Their personalities shone through. They had grit, and a distinct character, which is so hard to find these days. They felt like they had a million secrets…and no doubt they do. Catania in particular struck me. It has the reputation of being a grey city built of the volcanic stone and ash from Mount Etna (and home to the largest airport on the island), but if you look closely, you’ll find soft pink buildings tucked in between the grey, and beautiful details from when the city was largely rebuilt in the Baroque style after an earthquake nearly destroyed it in 1693. It felt like a dusty (literally from the volcanic ash), Sicilian Paris. If I could go back I would go to the Aeolian islands, or along the southern coast to experience more of the North African and Islamic influence on the island.
What’s one insider tip for getting the most out of the island?
Be adventurous and immerse yourself. Rent an airbnb tucked away in an old city like Catania, or try a sleepier old town by the sea. Go to the markets (especially the fish market) and spend half your time eating out (try the typical Catanese pasta with anchovies, raisins, breadcrumbs, and fennel) and half your time cooking with the amazing (and cheap!!) local ingredients. Have coffee with the locals.
Kate wears the LM Poplin Pant.
What’s next, what are you working on at the moment?
Like so many, I’m working on my work/life balance. Trying to take everything I’ve created over the past 15 years and make it work for me, instead of me working for it. I love what I do, but I spend a lot of time deep in the production aspect of it, and so taking the time to creatively recharge in order to avoid burnout feels crucial. I’m thinking a lot about what the next 15 years will look like and eager to push my own (current) creative limits into the next chapter.
Kate Jones is the designer behind jewellery brand, Ursa Major. After stints in New York and San Francisco, Kate and her husband Chris re-settled on the coast of Maine, where she lives and works from her home studio on the same small cove where she grew up on the Damariscotta River. Kate recently returned from an artists’ residence program in the Sicilian coastal town of Tusa, where she took her creative mind beyond jewellery and lived like a Sicilian.
Your work is heavily influenced by the sea, tell us about your relationship with it.
I have lived on the sea all of my life. As a child, my father took the whole family (including my three-month-old brother) to live aboard our sailboat, Ursa Major. We spent 19 months sailing down the eastern Caribbean islands all the way to Venezuela. In the subsequent years, we would spend anywhere from weeks to months exploring Tahiti, Belize, Honduras, Guatemala, the Bahamas. There’s nothing like arriving at your destination by boat. But when I’m standing at the shore, or sitting aboard, I am grounded and reset at the same time, perhaps depending on what I most need at the time. The sea calms me in a way nothing else does: falling asleep with salt on my skin, the quiet shush of waves on a shore through an open window, the rhythmic sound of them hitting the side of a boat while you rest inside, the gentle rocking, the full moon’s reflection shimmering, the sounds of halyards clinking against masts. It's the singularity and fluidity of it that influences my work the most. Sometimes I’m not exactly sure of my work’s specific ties to it; I may not see them because I aim for more obtuse translations of things rather than literal, but I know its spirit is embedded in me, and therefore the work.
Kate wears the LM Poplin LS Shirt.
You split your time between New York City and Maine – what do both places give you?
They both fill a crucial balance in my life. Maine is where I live, but I’m not sure I could make that work without regularly dipping my toes back into my former home. I love the pace of NYC but I don’t think I could live full time in the city again. The expression “in a New York minute” is a real thing; it offers you the ability to get ten thousand things done in one day, on the ground, and when I’m there, I do. I eat it up. I walk everywhere, I multi-task like a mad woman, take meetings back to back, run into a million people, soak up the spontaneity of the place. For five furious days every couple of months, I recharge that side of me. But the moment I get back to Maine I am thrilled. I live down a long dirt driveway, on a property filled with pine trees and perched above a quiet cove and I’m convinced that it is being surrounded by this much space and quiet that allows me to operate at the level I do. Some people think you can’t operate a business as well if it’s not in the city, but I think perhaps you can do it even better.
Kate wears the LM Poplin V-Neck Dress.
It seems there are some paradoxes in your work and life – between busy and quiet, subtlety and distinction, tradition and modernity. Where does this come from and how does it manifest in Ursa Major?
Oh I love this question! I have learnt that by striking the balance between such things, you create the space for people to make their own relationships to the piece. In a sense, I’m making them relatable by making them suggestive of different elements, yet never specifically one thing. Some pieces are more specific in their references, but ultimately I try to abstract them in some way that leaves them living between old and new, architectural and organic, detailed and minimal. The relationship one has to a piece of jewellery is just as important, if not even more so, than the jewellery itself and a suggestion is all it takes to create that dialogue between a wearer and the piece. Perhaps it’s even the difference of a suggestion versus an overt statement that makes something feel even more personal.
Kate wears the LM Poplin Cami and the LM Poplin LS Shirt.
Sustainability is integral to your practice. How do you pursue this endeavour?
By never assuming I have all of the answers and insisting on continually doing better. It needs to be an all encompassing way of operating, rather than just a “ticking the boxes” checklist. I generally don’t broadcast sustainability because fundamentally it is where we should all start, rather than a sales pitch. But I also appreciate that without talking about it we may not give consumers and others the tools to ask the right questions around “how can I be sustainable?”. If I tell someone that I know the name of the miner and stonecutter of this sapphire, or that we built a house insulated with straw, it’s to share the possibility of a standard we can hold ourselves to. But I also think that two of the most under discussed aspects of sustainability are the decision to stay small which allows you to have an intimate understanding of your environment (the conditions under which you and anyone else who provides for your business work in), as well as limiting the amount of goods you put into the world, and to design, aesthetically, with permanence in mind, not a passing trend. This is the foundation on which every other detailed aspect of my sustainability practice is built on.
Kate wears the LM Poplin V-Neck Dress.
When it comes to fashion, how would you describe your style?
A little undone and just feminine enough.
Tell us about your artist in residency in Sicily? How long were you there and what did an average day look like?
The program is called Officina Stamperia Del Notaio and it’s set in this tiny coastal Sicilian town called Tusa. The residents are pretty much the only tourists, which, given the tourist scene in Sicily this summer, was a complete gift. It was a total Sicilian summer immersion: coffee, swim, arancina, gelato, aperitif, and repeat. I swam each day with a gaggle of locals and one of my fellow residents, Edson Colón Aguirre, who took these photos so beautifully. My days were mostly spent chatting with fellow artists and locals (even though I was only just beginning to grasp Italian), sketching, reacquainting myself with photography via a borrowed vintage 35mm camera, and figuring out dinner. We cooked for ourselves half the time and I was fortunate to be surrounded by artists who also loved to cook. The beauty of the program is it’s entirely open and self disciplined. The time and space are there for you to do what you need creatively. For me, that was the freedom to be wholly present in a foreign place and to use my creative mind beyond jewellery.
Kate wears the LM Poplin LS Shirt and the LM Poplin V-Neck Dress.
What must-see places and things to do, see and eat would you recommend?
What I saw beyond Tusa was fairly limited, but I passed through Palermo, Cefalù, Santo Stefano, Taormina, and Catania. I am always put off by crowds, and being that it was June, it was crowded almost everywhere. Taormina and Cefalù were nuts and made us recognize what a gift it was to be based in a town free of tourists. Sure we didn’t have all of the options of shopping, nightlife, or restaurants, but we didn’t need it. I enjoyed Palermo and Catania, despite the crowds. Their personalities shone through. They had grit, and a distinct character, which is so hard to find these days. They felt like they had a million secrets…and no doubt they do. Catania in particular struck me. It has the reputation of being a grey city built of the volcanic stone and ash from Mount Etna (and home to the largest airport on the island), but if you look closely, you’ll find soft pink buildings tucked in between the grey, and beautiful details from when the city was largely rebuilt in the Baroque style after an earthquake nearly destroyed it in 1693. It felt like a dusty (literally from the volcanic ash), Sicilian Paris. If I could go back I would go to the Aeolian islands, or along the southern coast to experience more of the North African and Islamic influence on the island.
What’s one insider tip for getting the most out of the island?
Be adventurous and immerse yourself. Rent an airbnb tucked away in an old city like Catania, or try a sleepier old town by the sea. Go to the markets (especially the fish market) and spend half your time eating out (try the typical Catanese pasta with anchovies, raisins, breadcrumbs, and fennel) and half your time cooking with the amazing (and cheap!!) local ingredients. Have coffee with the locals.
Kate wears the LM Poplin Pant.
What’s next, what are you working on at the moment?
Like so many, I’m working on my work/life balance. Trying to take everything I’ve created over the past 15 years and make it work for me, instead of me working for it. I love what I do, but I spend a lot of time deep in the production aspect of it, and so taking the time to creatively recharge in order to avoid burnout feels crucial. I’m thinking a lot about what the next 15 years will look like and eager to push my own (current) creative limits into the next chapter.