Some come for the food, others for the tie-dye and I come for the jewelry. The much beloved Eugene Saturday Market returned for the first time in 2024 on April 6 and brought out dozens of talented jewelers to one central location. These two jewelers carve out their own lane.
Negar Jewel
Negar Tehmidi, originally a painter, has been making jewelry for over 20 years and selling at the Saturday Market for eight.
Tehmidi’s jewelry features a wire wrap base, allowing her pieces to be adjustable and customizable. “I love to make rings, adjustable ones especially, so everybody can have a little piece of my work,” Tehmidi said.
Tehmidi uses copper, stainless steel and aluminum wires in her jewelry. Recently, the aluminum wire has been her favorite to use because of its light weight and durability. She chooses these materials because they are less likely to tarnish than other “fashion wires.”
“I use stuff that you can shower with and you can have it all the time in your hand or hanging wherever and you can sleep with it,” Tehmidi said. “I want to make sure that they’re comfortable and they won’t tarnish.”
An especially beautiful line of Tehmidi’s work uses flowers from her garden encased in resin. The seemingly immortal flowers pop under the coat of resin, making her already beautiful jewelry stand out even more.
Tehmidi describes her jewelry as affordable and practical, making it a “win-win situation” for her and her customers.
Wild Thyme Studio
Diane Stone is a multimedia artist specializing in crochet jewelry. She has been selling her jewelry at the Saturday Market for three years and has been crocheting since the 1960s.
“Oh, I’ve crocheted all kinds of things,” Stone said. “Years ago, I made some little wired crocheted bracelets, and I wanted to do market — I wanted to do my own thing.”
Stone got into the Saturday Market when she was making cozies to go with her daughter’s tea business, Oregon Tea Company. She said her husband pushed her to do her own company and Wild Thyme was born.
In addition to colorful crochet creations, Stone makes greeting cards. She said that as a quilter, she hadn’t made art with paper until five years ago when she started making her cards.
“I like doing things that are flowers. Color is one of the things that’s really important to me,” Stone said. “And then I love working with beads, so you know, I’m just pulling out my old beads and saying, ‘what do I have that will go with things?’”
As a multimedia artist, Stone is looking to expand her horizons and add in a new medium in the near future: watercolor. “I always have to be learning something new, trying something new. My next venture is I’m just starting to use watercolor pencils,” Stone said. “I’m going to add it to my cards. I’ve never done watercolor before, but I’ve always admired it.”
Jewelry is a highly customizable and unique form of fashion expression that not many mediums can claim. The Eugene Saturday Market is the perfect place to explore that creative expression and check out one of a kind jewelry from all sorts of styles and vendors.
Check out these artists at the Eugene Saturday Market for high quality local jewelry.
