‘I do stone carvings on this bench; sometimes I do the intricate wax carvings on this bench.’

The Paloma Wilder Studio, a handcrafted jewelry shop named after its founder, is located on Milwaukee’s East Side. Journeying from theater prop design to custom jewelry, Wilder started her first jewelry studio in her basement. Now settled on the second floor of the historic Bertelson Building, Wilder has grown her business to feature a jewelry showcase and studio.

Mara Branum: I’d love for you to walk me through your workspace. Which bench is yours?

Paloma Wilder: This is my bench. This was the fancy bench I bought myself when I was like, “I deserve to get myself a nice bench.” I do stone carvings on this bench; sometimes I do the intricate wax carvings on this bench. If I want to work under the microscope here, I can. The thing is – especially with wax casting – it’s such a process. I would argue, especially because I was really into ceramics in college, that it allowed me to have the patience to work in wax. But it’s such a process. You’re working on this wax piece, and then you go to cast it. If it doesn’t quite turn out, then you have to cast it again. And then you pull the casting, and it’s not finished when it comes out of the plaster yet either.

Mara Branum: What goes through your head during the process of making a piece?

Paloma Wilder: It’s just a long process that I think you really have to stick with and do a bunch of times before you try it. I mean, we have some interns, and I was like, “You can watch me do this, but I’m not even going to have you start planning to do it until you’ve seen it happen like 20, 25 times.” It does break your heart when you blow a casting. We never have the interns or newer employees work on something that is so high-stakes, because you need time to learn first.

Mara Branum: Do you have any recent pieces you’re proud of?

I’m very proud of my little “P” that I engraved on a practice piece of mine. It’s the tiniest letter that I’ve made so far. We do diamond-bit engraving on the inside of rings, and I’ll hand-finish it. But I don’t do the old-master style yet, so that’s what I’ve been practicing. There’s only one engraver in the entire U.S. that does hand-push [engraving] right now. I love doing the hand-carved stuff; it’s another archaic thing I can add to my repertoire.

Mara Branum: In the trade, do you get the opportunity to meet other jewelers? You mentioned there’s only one other person who does hand engraving.

Palome Wilder: I mean, the community is, to be honest, I want to say it’s weird. I feel like it has been shrinking. It definitely has been shrinking. There’s a bit of a craft reemergence, and there’s another craft school that has opened up outside of Nashville. But the main school in the States, which was in San Francisco, was shut down more than a decade ago. Not as many people were interested in learning, and a lot of these skills have ended up being shipped overseas. But we still need to have the ability to work on that stuff here. We need a global market to be able to produce the things that we produce. We couldn’t close ourselves off and make diamond rings because we don’t have many diamonds here.

I feel like last year I was talking about that a lot. With everything that has been going on, it still affects our ability to get tools. The gem trade has been a wild ride the last few years. We definitely need global trade, but we’ve got to keep some of the skills here, too.

Mara Branum: How can a jewelry maker begin the process of learning how to use all these tools and techniques?

Paloma Wilder: The New Approach [Jewelry School] is a good place to go – that’s outside of Nashville. Other than that, it’s kind of learning on the job. I learned – I’ll be honest – my apprenticeship was a lot of sweeping, watering the plants, and making coffee for everyone that worked there.

It’s good to set your expectations low, because really, for me, I didn’t have any of the language yet. I didn’t even know what the tools were. So just to be in the studio and look at things… Now, I think I’d have a different experience because you could use Google Lens on any of the stuff that was around. But back then, I would be looking at stuff, and it’s all a mystery. I would be seeing a tool and looking at a book and trying to figure out what the tool was and how it worked.

Mara Branum: How do you think new technology has impacted jewelry makers?

Paloma Wilder: The ability to learn has really opened up everything for us, but at the same time, there’s a lot of information. It’s good to narrow your focus, too. We talk about that a lot around here. You can’t follow every path. If you want your 10,000 hours of practice, you have to sit and focus on just the wax carving. And then you can get really good at that. And then the skills start to transfer to other things. But you won’t be able to get there if you’re just looking at a new skill that you’re trying to achieve. You have to stick to one and put your time into it.