At the request of friends and collectors of hand made jewelry, Ani Afshar’s unique beaded jewelry creations were available first only in museum stores and private sale events. As her popularity increased, Ani Afshar ultimately opened her own company in 1993, with the agenda to develop a unique jewelry product that would appeal to women of all ages.   Almost immediately the fashion press (including WWD, Marie Claire In-Style, Modern Bride, Chicago Tribune, Sun Times, Chicago Magazine & Chicago Social) applauded her work and she began selling through important fashion retailers. Customers sought out her luminous, feminine beaded creations at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, Harrod’s and Fenwick’s, Tokyo/Osaka’s Ku-Croissant (Seibu, Daimaru, Isetan) and in the U.S at Bloomingdale’s, Barney’s, Henry Bendel, Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Ave, Anthropology and Many specialty boutiques. The demands of the local and national Market were such that in 2000 Ani Afshar opened her exquisite Jewelry boutique which has become a landmark on the trendy Lincoln Park fashion scene, showcases her fine annual Collections.

Much of Ani Afshar’s success has always been rooted in her desire to share the joy of creating jewelry with others. She has traveled extensively in Southeast Asia teaching the techniques of marketable jewelry making to unemployed, rural women, and even published a book Beading Necklaces With Ani Afshar  (Schiffer,1995) which is widely available.

The legendary Chicago Studios of Ani Afshar will soon be the home for her new series of workshops and seminars to teach new techniques and help refine the jewelry making skills of students and other jewelers alike.

HER LIFE AND ART:

The popular jewelry of Ani Afshar is not unlike the designer herself; a complex product of many cultures and intellectual design processes fused into a unique attitude and perspective of broad appeal.

Born in Istanbul, Ani Afshar was educated in Gstaad, Switzerland from an early age. This confluence of two respective Eastern and Western artistic traditions formed the foundation of her multi cultural background. She lived later in such international cities as Geneva, Tehran and now Chicago, which she loves for it’s architectural and design significance in the art world.

A lifelong student of world cultures and art history, ethnographic textiles and textures and forms indigenous to specific cultures have always provided inspiration. This is expressed in the unique implementation of color theory in her jewelry, as well as an approach to it’s construction that is similar to traditional textile manufacture.

The result as manifested in her celebrated jewelry designs is a repertoire of conceptual possibilities achieved through the direct use of transparent and opaque bead components, derivative as much from the world of ancestral textiles as it is impacted by the trends of contemporary art and design context of today’s multi cultural world.