Sybil and David Yurman: The Artists Who Built an Empire

TRANSCRIPT

David Yurman: We are symbols of runaway. I’m a hitchhiker, dyslexic, major ADD, flipping from this to that, that the only thing that kept us together and focused was the love and passion of art. It’s something that fed us. We did what we want. We went to pleasure, not too excessive pleasure. We went to… I’m very disciplined.

Dan Rubinstein: Hi, I’m Dan Rubinstein, and this is The Grand Tourist. I’ve been a design journalist for more than 20 years, and this is my personalized guided tour through the worlds of fashion, art, architecture, food, and travel, all the elements of a well-lived life.

The world of jewelry is a fickle one, dominated by many of the European houses that have decades or even centuries of history behind them. There are only a handful of American names in the business, and one of them is the topic of conversation today. And wouldn’t you know it, this purveyor of luxury didn’t start with a royal warrant or massive investment from aristocratic backers. Instead, it started with a pair of young artists, madly in love, who used their creative talents mixed with some old-fashioned New Yorker bravado, to create pieces for men and women that have stood the test of time.

David and Sybil Yurman, originally both from the Bronx, the pair had their own rambunctious journeys through life as artists, before meeting in the studio of a respected sculptor in the late ’60s, which we’ll get into. Before collaborating on things like belt buckles and bracelets, Sybil, an accomplished painter and master of color and abstraction, and David, a sculptor who created his own directly welded works. Of course, the history of the David Yurman name is vast, but in hearing their story today, you’ll get to experience the flow of time through some of the most creative decades in American art, craft, design and eventually, luxury.

Their incredible journey has been detailed in the new book, Sybil and David Yurman: Artists and Jewelers, published by Phaidon. I caught up with David and Sybil from their home in Manhattan to talk about their lives as rebellious kids, being central figures in a success story from the age of the American craft scene, how their son, Evan, has gone on to carry the torch. The times Sybil ran into Jack Kerouac, what Kate Moss is really like, and more.

I know you guys met later in life, but you were both born in New York the same year, so I was wondering-

Sybil Yurman: Well, we didn’t meet later in life. We met when we were 25, but I did have quite a life before I was 25, because-

Sure, well, you didn’t meet when you were born.

DY: That’s for sure.

Put it that way.

DY: And we were five blocks apart in the Bronx.

Five blocks apart, okay. And so, tell me about your first memories of life in the city as children, five blocks apart, but even though you didn’t know each other of course at the time. Sybil, what’s your earliest memory of New York?

SY: Well, mine were actually quite wonderful of the Bronx. It was a place for exploration. I lived right off Brooklyn Boulevard, right near where the White Castle is on Brooklyn Boulevard. And it was a wonderful experience. It was freedom. You could play, go, be in the street. In the summertime, if it was hot, you could sleep on a fire escape or be outside with a cot. It was a great sense of camaraderie and safety for me. I lived near the river as well, and the Long Island sound, so it was a place for just exploration. Many children. There’s a picture in the book of a group of about 10 children on the street. So, there was always interactions. Burt Tansky who was the chairman of Neiman’s, lived next on the same street. For me, it was sunshine, it was camaraderie.

DY: Well, I got to say, I don’t know what block you were living on, but I wish I was one block closer, because I can say, it’s Haiti. It was death and destruction, it was ugly, it was fearful. It was a living nightmare for me. I was very disoriented. There were gangs. Someone much older than me would approach me, he’d say, “What gang do you belong to? Do you belong to the Fordham Baldies or the Soup gang?” And I didn’t know what they were talking about. I felt I was dropped in from another planet and I would be regularly beaten up by saying the wrong gang. Thank God I only lived there until I was about nine years old, nine or 10, and we moved out to Long Island where it was a house. It had a little bit of property, some fruit trees, I had a bicycle, life was good. Everything flipped. Totally flipped when I moved out.

And Sybil, in your book you describe yourself as a young person, as rebellious, and your parents as formidable characters. Tell me about your parents and did they encourage you as a young artist or as a young aspiring artist or a blossoming one?

SY: Oh, yes. Well, I didn’t live with my parents until… I lived with my parents until I was about 15 and a half, 16. I ran away from home very early. But my father, who was a poet and he was a designer of furniture, our house was, even though our apartment was very small, it was a one bedroom, my parents slept in the living room, but our furniture was beautiful Danish furniture. Furniture was made from cherry wood by designers. The walls, my father would put up different pictures of Gauguin or Matisse or the artist that was touching him at the moment.

Even though it was this tiny little apartment, three children sleeping in a bedroom. And it was very difficult childhood. My brother died when I was 10 years old. He was only six. So there was a great deal of trauma around that. My father being a poet and having to work three jobs to support us all was also trauma. But when he realized I like to paint, he bought me paints and I didn’t have a lot of money, so he gave me the colors I wanted and canvases and I would paint and sell my pictures to whomever came in the house or whoever lived near us. And I used that money to run away from home.

And David, in the book, you describe your own childhood as tricky, and you mentioned an undiagnosed dyslexia. How do you believe that affected you as a young man? And also did it maybe even push you to be more visual and to maybe [inaudible 00:07:37] into this more creative world.

DY: Yeah, I think if you’re afflicted with something, whatever the deficiency is, it’s like water. I think the creative spirit wants to go where it can be healthiest, where the sun is. And for sure, I was dyslexic, still am a bit, there was no ADHD. It’s just David is acting out and not paying attention, which I still do. But the acting out was like, it became like, how does it get me out of class and get me to the nurse’s office so I don’t have to be embarrassed when they asked me the question that I don’t know the answer to? Because I couldn’t read well enough and I would fall asleep after about 15 minutes of reading, I would just doze. So it made me move towards the visual. And I think I had the proclivity…

My father, he thought he was in the belt and trimming business in the fashion district, and he really was, he owned this business called Foremost Trimmings, and he made belts and trim for the dress industry for Evan-Picone and Marimekko. And he color matched and he designed these wide cinch belts of the ’50s and lame, stretchy and just all kinds of emblematic stuff.

I’d go to see his factory every once in a while on Saturday and just climb around the bolts of fabric and stuff. And so, there was that creativity or understanding of fashion. He was a dresser. I have a picture of him wearing, I think they were loafers. He was in a boat, a little rowboat and was fishing, and he’s wearing alligator loafers. Not exactly the shoe you want to be wearing on a boat, but he thought it looked really nice. So maybe they were getting old. So he wanted the throw of them out. But that was his boat shoe, alligator loafers.

Did he ever push you to be like, “One of these days, kid, this is all going to be yours,” kind of thing?

DY: No.

Did he…

DY: There was no lineage. The only real contact I had with my father, with the exception of going on occasional to see the factory, it was really, let’s go horseback riding. Let’s dress you up so you look like a proper son of the gentleman rider. And we wore jotfers and tweed jackets and we went to Hempstead Lake State Park. And on most Saturdays when, probably from the age of 12, 13 to the age of 15 or 16, and we rode together. There was not a lot of conversation. There was not a lot of training. It was like, figure it out. You’re on the horse. Pull back, he’ll stop. Okay, catch up.

I think I was actually dragged to go horseback riding in the same place a few decades later. And I definitely did not enjoy it. But that’s a podcast for another day.

DY: It’s scary.

It is scary.

DY: Because you’re riding around with it. There’s a parkway around these reservoirs.

I find horses very scary, especially-

DY: Oh, I love my-

Long Island horses are the worst.

DY: I’ve got two.

And later on in the ’60s, you guys both rebelled against convention and you spent a lot of time in the village and out west in the country. I’d love to hear from you guys, in your own words, how that journey was before you met? Those formative years. Sibyl, let’s start with you because I know you spent some time in San Francisco.

SY: Yes, I did. Well, when I was 16, as I said, I was 16 and a half, I-

You ran away, right?

SY: I ran away from home to Greenwich Village and I was able to get a job in a coffee shop on Bleecker Street and meet a lot of interesting people that I didn’t know existed. But I knew there was life after the Bronx. That’s why I wanted to leave. At a very early stage, I met a group, the Leary and Alpert people, and mescaline was something that was quite common at the time. And so, hallucinogenics and the beginning of Zen Buddhism and poetry, poetry readings met Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky, and that was in Greenwich Village.

And then what we did was, I went to San Francisco, a friend of mine’s. I had always wanted to swim in the ocean while the sun set. Water’s always been important to me. Little did I know that in California the water was freezing and there were oil wells really dotting the ocean. So it was not something I was able to realize as a fantasy. But I was very happy to be in California where the people were very different than what had become of the Bronx. And I was fortunate because my friend had told me, “Go to City Lights Bookstore and put your name and your whereabouts, address where you’re going to be and I’ll find you.” And sure enough, in a few days, this person found me. And then I had to find a place to live and took me to a place called the Hyphen House.

And the Hyphen house was a house where pretty much beat writers of the time lived. And no women were supposed to live there. The women were at a place called the East West House. But because I was so young, he thought they would let me stay there and take care of the house to keep it clean. And they did. When the first day that I was brought there, I was being shown around the house and I looked in the kitchen, he was showing me the kitchen and there was someone sleeping on the floor in the kitchen. And I asked, “What’s that person doing on the floor? Who is it?” And he said, “Oh, it’s Jack Kerouac. Do not wake him up.” And it was like, what?

Okay, wow.

SY: I had read On the Road and it was like, really? And so, that was the beginning of me being a peripheral character in the lives of the people that were at the East West House and at the Hyphen House.

DY: Were you the only painter?

SY: No. There was another painter-

DY: It just seemed like a literary world of interesting dropouts.

SY: No, there was another painter in the house, but I can’t remember his name for some reason. And he was very good and very successful. And when they realized I wanted to paint, Cassidy got me paints. He would come to different houses-

DY: Wait, a minute, is that Hopalong Cassidy?

SY: No. No.

DY: What Cassidy are we talking about?

Well, if you can’t remember his name, well.

DY: Well, the mushrooms.

That’s true. [inaudible 00:15:23] or all that stuff. And David, I heard you did the most American of rituals. You hitchhiked cross country?

DY: Many times.

Many times? Okay.

DY: Many times.

Why hitchhike? Why hitchhike?

DY: Why not?

Was it just money?

DY: It was money.

Or did you have this idea of like, this is going to be an awesome adventure?

DY: Exactly. I thought it’d be a great adventure. I didn’t read On the Road. It was an adventure. I had finished high school. I had one year of college, and then I was supposedly going to Santa Monica City College. I sent some papers off, so I was going to matriculate as they said. And my parents gave me about 100 bucks, $150 and a ticket to take a bus to California.

So a friend of mine, Bob Berg, and I went to the ticket station office and we ready to get on the bus. And I said, “Can I return this for money?” And she said, “$78.” I said, “Great. I’d like to get $78 back.” And Bob looked at me and said, “What are you doing?” I said, “Well, I think we could hitchhike. It’d be better to hitchhike.” And we just had two rucksacks that was our… That’s what it was called, rucksacks back then, they’re backpacks. And we hitchhiked and it was a great experience going out together.

Some frightening moments. We got to St. Louis and he wanted to stay. He had a girlfriend. I wanted to go out to Santa Monica and be out with the beatniks. So he said, “I’m staying, I’ll meet you out there.” I hitchhiked the rest of the way and-

SY: That’s great.

DY: That’s definitely too much time to tell the adventures. And there were a lot of adventures on our first trip out. But I did drive-away cars and I hitched about five times back and forth.

Oh wow. Okay.

DY: Yeah.

What was the craziest thing that ever happened to you on a hitchhike? Any hitchhiking trip.

DY: Actually it was two or three years after that. It was the year that Kennedy was shot, that he was assassinated. And it was that next morning, I was in Terre Haute and no, it’s on the Will Rogers Parkway. It was part of Route 66. And this guy picked me up and he started asking me these questions and, “Where are you going? Where do you come from?” Dah, dah, dah. Just lots of interrogative questions. And I said, “Are you police? I’m okay. What’d you think about the assassination?” We’re talking. He said, “I’m a truant officer,” and I think I was 22, 23, so he wasn’t looking at me coming from school. And so we’re just chatting away and there’s a young couple on the side of the road, picks them up, they go in the back seat. He starts asking them questions and they’re giving him all the wrong answers, they’re changing their story. “Oh yeah, we’re going to see our aunt, our uncle, I mean.” And I said, “Oh God.” So he goes up a couple of 10 miles if that, and he pulls over to the side and he said, “Well, David, this is where I’m going to let you off. It’s good enough for you here?” And he gives me a little wink. I said, “Yeah, it’s fine. Thank you.”

I get out and he makes a big looping U-turn off the highway, and oh dear. There was another one where I actually had a gun pulled on me, but I don’t want to tell, that’s bad memory. But most of them were good, most of them were… Drove a bus, picked me up outside of Indiana and the buses, the whole seven or eight buses were leaving Indiana and going to Oxnard, California. I took the whole ride with them, and all the people that were picked up along the way, vagrants and teachers and a painter who had blood poisoning, I sat next to, was going to see his daughter. I also learned how to thread a needle while sitting in the back of a bus. This guy showed me that most important, you take the thread and you get a little wet and you bring the needle to the thread, not the thread to the needle. So if you ever want to be threading a needle in the back of a bus, remember, you take the needle to the thread.

(SPONSOR BREAK)

The two of you guys both met working for Hans von der Bovenkamp, if I’m pronouncing that correctly, a sculptor known for his sort of large, abstract pieces. How would you guys both describe his work, but also his impact on you guys as artists? Sybil, why don’t you start?

SY: Well, he didn’t have a big impact on me as an artist. I worked for him, doing their projects and commissions, and saw that all the young sculptors, and David was a foreman there, that we all had the materials we needed. What it did for me was I met David there, and that was the beginning of our friendship, and then three months to the beginning of our romance.

DY: You can say romance, romance is good.

SY: I just said it, in the beginning of our romance-

DY: Romance, okay.

SY: Was on my birthday in December, so I started working in September. Three months later we started a romance and we’ve been together now for 53 years.

DY: I saw the romance from day one when you walked in the door. Listen to this, she walks in the door, this long studio, 75 feet in length, and the door’s sort of in the middle. And this person comes out with giant, it was like Cher hair, just black hair and it was this wild kind of shrub. And she was wearing a poncho sweater from-

SY: Peru.

DY: Probably from Peru on the top, but on the bottom, she had a similar poncho on the bottom and this black bushy hair, and I think they were black boots, red laces, and there were little bells. And she was walking across the floor and it was sounding like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, ka-ching, ka-ching. And I’m leaning over and looking at her and so was everyone else, all the other six or seven sculptors, we were all leaning. I said, “Wow, what was that? I don’t know but Hans, she’s definitely going to have an interesting interview.” She got the job and she got all the guys together because at lunchtime we’d separate and go different ways, but she got us to have communal lunches together.

She was very attractive and everyone was sort of hitting on her. She was totally in control. She wasn’t like this little cute secretary gal Friday, and she wanted to learn how to do some welding, so she was welding and brazing. Hans for me, was a businessman as well as an artist, I mean equal. I liked his art, I liked what he made. And a lot of the guys were like, “Ah, he’s just doing architectural.” I mean, he’s doing big projects. I wouldn’t put him down.

SY: He did, at the Peachtree Plaza, the sculpture there that shoots flames. He did that piece, that was fun. I worked on that.

DY: Yeah, mostly making his large fountains, but he had a commercial business where you could put a fountain in your home. There were seven or eight styles, and we manufactured them by hand, these copper fountains and things would move up and down there was water wheels and little motors in them. I was kind of the foreman of the group for a while and then I said, “I’ll get out of this. It’s like caring, feeding of the animals. I don’t want to do that.” So I worked a deal with him where I would make a fountain and do it at piece work and I’d be an independent contractor on his premises. So I could do two days work and make my salary, and that would give me enough time to go to my studio and try to figure out what the hell I was doing.

SY: But he did show up every morning and bring me coffee, which I didn’t drink, because I never drank coffee.

DY: I don’t know why she couldn’t tell me, “Bring me tea.”

And so, you never told him, “I don’t drink coffee?” You just took it as like a fun… That’s cute, that’s pretty good.

SY: He brought me coffee, it made him happy and I liked the doughnut.

DY: That’s [inaudible 00:25:58] women.

SY: He talked to me and I was busy taking care of the business for the group. And when I was there the first time, the woman that it had been her job and she was walking me through, and I met all the people, all the men, and I asked her about David. I said, “What about David, is he married?” And she said, “No.” And I said, “Is he gay?” And she said, “No.” And I said, “Oh, okay, thanks.” And he asked her about-

DY: Potential questions.

Jackpot.

SY: He asked her about me, which I didn’t know until later in our relationship. But it was a fun time and what I liked and really helped me towards understanding when we had our own workshop, that the idea of bringing everyone together and how important it was to have camaraderie and to either have lunch at work or all go out together and talk about what we were doing and what was working and what wasn’t working when we were trying to facilitate the projects that were in front of us.

And Sybil, how would you describe them to someone you never met before? If someone says, “Oh, you’re a painter,” what are your paintings like? What did you respond?

SY: Interesting. It’s still the same river that runs through. They were emotional connotations, they were heartfelt experiences. What it felt like being at the beach, looking at the sky and experiencing the sky. It’s not an intellectual experience. I just had a show of my work in Sag Harbor this summer. I haven’t shown in years and I didn’t want to, necessarily, and I was asked to show a group of paintings I do. They’re house paintings, they’re all houses, and they really are almost self-portraits of an emotional moment. That’s what my work was about, if I was going to explain it.

And David, what was your first impression of Sybil’s paintings when you… At some point she must have said, “Come to my studio, look at my paintings.”

DY: Yeah, I went to the 99th Street, she had a very large, on the west side of Riverside, 99th, I think it was a five-bedroom apartment. There were other artists living there as well. Her paintings, particularly the one that was called Sky Markings, and the sky markings, I didn’t know where the horizon was. I didn’t know you were in the sky and it was soft blues and pinks and a sharp line cutting across. And it was like, “What am I looking at here?” But there was something very, very compelling and I just felt enveloped by this. The color, you got absorbed in the color and then you saw these markings, and then you were sort of like, “There’s a language here, someone speaking something. There’s something of intelligence that’s coming across here.” It was cosmically beautiful.

And I never thought of looking at abstract paintings just in that way, that it started speaking to me much more than any abstract paintings. And I liked looking, I went to museums all the time. The paintings can touch you in a way that they’re so subtle. Sybil and I went to a Morandi show on the east side in a small gallery. Some guy has collected 60 of Morandi’s over the years. And there’s something about, it’s almost a religious experience when you stand in front of a painting, the stillness of it, the intelligence of it. I don’t know what it is, visual vibrations. I don’t want to get too mushy here, but for me, those quiet moments are looking at someone’s creativity and the energy that’s gone into them. Am I answering this question?

Yeah, you are.

DY: I was in love with the paintings, she was okay.

Not bad. 

(SPONSOR BREAK)

In the ’70s, the American craft scene was kind of born and the American Craft Museum, which is now called the Museum of Arts and Design, came about around then in New York and the two of you guys started to collaborate as a pair. From your own point of view, what was happening in the world of art and creativity and craft at the time? Explain that moment, because now looking back, it seems these kinds of things about craft seem so, I mean, obviously they’re in vogue again, of course, but just paint a picture of what that creative scene was like that was giving birth to that American craft moment.

DY: Well, I think what was happening is this is one of the great movements, at least in America, for the counterculture. People live in urban environments were going to upstate New York, to Vermont, to Maine. They were leaving the urban congestion and whatnot. There was the Whole Earth Catalog, which was kind of their Bible of how to live in nature, how to make your own psilocybin-mushroom mix, how to grow asparagus. It was a force against. I think Basquiat was painting and Keith Haring, and it was just an artistic and very personal rejection of was what was going on. It was the Vietnam War, the music was changing.

There was a throughput from the, I guess not the beatniks but the Bohemians, who were always there and expanding mind, mind expansion through various drugs and whatnot, but Aldous Huxley and Brave New World, and it was like, “What are we doing? How are we living our lives? Why are we on a treadmill? Why are we marching to someone else’s tune?” We’d tune in and turn on, dropout. That was one of the expressions. But it was clearly just even the way you dressed. You’re a beatnik, you’re a hippie, you’re not at the office. You could identify yourself as belonging to the other team.

You were definitely not wearing pinstripes, you’re a Dodger fan. They look different, they eat different, they talk differently. It’s a different, we are the other people, we’re the crazy creatives. And then eventually we did this as another parts of this that we do. After having about 15 years of that, 12, 15 years, we start integrating because we’re maturing. We start integrating back into the existing culture, back into the mainstream. And that’s kind of what we did. We did about 10, 12 years with an overlap, we were just selling art galleries and very high-end craft stores and some museums.

SY: And we were living in upstate New York.

DY: Right, we’re living on a farm.

SY: We were living and I was farming with two other women, and the man that was helping us, teaching us how to do organic farming was the advisor to Japan after the bombings of Hiroshima. He would teach us how to farm naturally, and it was the time of being vegetarians and microbiotics. And so, one day it was like, “I want to move back to New York.”

I can imagine.

SY: And also at the same time, I decided to go to school. I’d never gone to high school, so I had to get a high school degree in order to go to college, and I decided I wanted to work as a psychologist with children. And so I was doing that, and I was painting the whole time. And someone said to me, “What do you mean, you’re not going to be an artist?” And it was, “Well, I’m going to school now, and this is what I’m planning to do. I’m going to get trained at the Horn Eye Institute.” And they were like, “I thought you were an artist.” “Why?” “Well, you think like an artist. You think in visual imagery. You don’t speak like someone who would be doing this other profession.” And he’s like, “Well, what’s your calling?” And so I had to really ponder what a calling was. And finally I really lost all sense of what that meant.

So I went to my father who was a philosopher and a poet, and asked him, “Dad, I’ve lost perspective. What is a calling?” And he said, “Well, if you were a leaf on a tree, you would fall to your natural place.” And I went back to the university and I said, “Can I transfer out of the department? And I would like to learn how to do life drawing and I’d like to learn how to draw better than what I’m doing, with more proficiency.” And they said, “Sure, of course. But I don’t think you need to go to school. But if you want to, sure you can be in the program.” There were only 25 students at the time, and it was based on Bauhaus concept at the time.

And so I did, and then I was painting and my work, I was selling work and I was showing in a few galleries and I was able to help finance the business because no one would lend us any money and it was a different way of living now. We were back in New York, and so we made that transition. We were both no longer vegetarians. On the same day, we both came home with a little bag of meat.

DY: Steak and chicken livers.

SY: To cook up individually of each other.

And so in the eighties when we see the company emerge under David’s name for the first time, if I kind of went back in time and met you guys at that point, what was the aspirations for the company in those early days?

SY: Not to have a company. A company wasn’t the objective for us. The objective was to be able to be creative, to be able to design things, to be creative, period, and have fun and sustain ourselves, make enough money to…

DY: To stop making jewelry and go back to sculpture and painting. I had a number, this is always Sybil’s. You see what my vision was? If I could get $75,000 in one place that it was clearly profit after taxes, I think we’d have enough money for me to go back and start sculpting again and have built up enough. I was doing direct welding, so direct welded bronzes, and it would be, that’s what I do. And I know that number kept on getting… “Maybe 107. I meant 175,000. I meant 1.75 million. That’s what I was meaning.”

When did you guys, in the world of jewelry now, when was the first hit that you kind of thought, “Okay, this is a big success. People are really reacting to it”? What was that first hit where you were like, “Okay, maybe 1.5 million. Maybe 10 million. Maybe [inaudible 00:39:51]-“

SY: There was-

DY: We were, first of all, we were making belt buckles. And belt buckles is specifically for craft because wearing wide belts and carved, Sybil would paint scenes on carved belts, and we were selling belts and belt buckles. That was the business, which is really weird because my father was in belt and trimmings and I clearly didn’t want to do anything my father was doing, but there I was at craft fairs, selling belts and buckles. And then I was at National Boutique shows, and then I had a distributor. And before I knew it, I had a $3 million business. And I’m saying $3 million then. And I was a crafter. And I wouldn’t say I was a regular, but I would come and go as I please, or I like to think that I was doing that.

But I was a slave to the business. I was filling orders and getting this right and getting castings, getting new castings, trying to get someone to fund us to get ahead of it. And it was just trying to keep up. But we had a $3 million business before we were getting into the jewelry part. And I learned business. I learned how to write an order, how to check credit, how to work with a distributor. And I found it very, very unsatisfactory because I was chasing. But if you go on the Shark Tank and today they say, “Well, how much business are you doing?” And someone says, “$2 million.” They go, “Whoa, $2 million. That’s incredible.” So our $3 million was closer to seven or almost $10 million business. And then I think that the belt buckle business started to fade also.

SY: It was a lot of, we were baffled by a lot of it that we would go to a craft fair or be somewhere and it would be a crowd of people to step up and buy, whether it was the belt buckles or the sculptural jewelry that David was doing.

DY: Yeah, that’s what was belts and sculptural jewelry.

SY: And what happened was the head of the Jewelry Association came to us at a show and said, “I’d like to offer you a space to show in New York City in our major jewelry show. Would you like to do that?” And we both said no.

DY: Not really.

SY: And mainstream. And what do you do, you sell to jewelry stores and department stores? I don’t think so. And he convinced us to do it. And he said, “I’ll protect you, I’ll help you. I’ll show you what to do.”

DY: Well, actually on their own they decided, this man’s name is Mort Abelson, who’s the chairman, the president of what was called the RJA, Retail Jewelers Association. And it was the association that was for all the retail jewelers in America. And they had this once-a-year show at the time, and they said, “We’re going to invite 11 or 12 craft jewelers to come in and show what this new jewelry looks like.” We love it. There’s still people who are still making, have viable businesses that started there. It was 1977, 1978, and they gave us a space. There was, you just have to build a…

SY: So to answer your question, it was a pivotal moment because there we were at the show, we didn’t really understand a lot, but we had real criteria. I did, because now I had joined the business, I had-

DY: I have the exception to the one thing you said, Sybil.

SY: What?

DY: We didn’t understand a lot. Well, that’s almost a given. But we did have, for almost nine years, business experience. We had a $3 million buckle business with two distributors, West Coast mid. So I like business, I like making money, I like producing, I like knowing that my belt buckles, we sold 5,000 one year and there was a rodeo, I can’t remember who it was, George Strait. George Strait has a David Yurman belt buckle. Well, George Strait is a legend. He just retired, by the way. And besides singing and writing songs, he also, he bulldogs, he ropes. He’s a real cowboy. So for me-

SY: The reason this is important is people don’t know-

DY: … People that are genuine. What?

SY: People don’t know David’s-

DY: He’s a cowboy.

SY: He’s a cowboy. His other persona is that of a straight out cowboy and he’s out in Montana.

DY: I ride horses competitively. Even at the age of 82.

Do you own horses?

DY: Yeah, right now I’m down to two. I have two western quarter horses that are, one’s a world champ and the other one is just real good to ride.

SY: But David is a reiner and a reiner is someone who does Western dressage.

DY: Yeah, that’s a way to say it.

SY: They spin and slide and do these different things. But what I was getting at was that for us, coming into this new world of dealing, well, you asked the question, when did we realize and what was a pivotal moment that we said, “Wait a minute, this is interesting. This is the beginning of something bigger than we imagined.” So there was a moment, and it’s a very simple moment. Maybe I could say something more sophisticated, but it was a very simple moment being at this trade show. And two women came over, one dressed very nicely, and the other one kind of like a dowdy woman, big glasses covered with powder on it from her makeup. And it turns out they’re looking at things, at the jewelry. And I said, “Well, what do you like? Which things?” They said, “Well, we’re not writing an order right now.”

And I said, “Well, all right, I can take a paper and I’ll put down for you the pieces that interest you so you could…” “Well, we don’t want you to write an order.” I said, “I’ll give it to you. You could take it so you know what it is when you want to call us and ask for the pieces.” And I asked, “Well, what’s the name of the company?” And the woman says, “Saks.” And I said, “Will I spell it S-A-C-H-S?” And she said, “No, that’s not how you spell Saks.” And I said, “Well, how do you spell it?” She said, “S-A-K-S.” And I said, “Well, how do you get away with that?” And she said, “What do you mean?” And I said, “Well, that’s Saks Fifth Avenue’s name. How do you get away with using that?” And she said, “We are Saks Fifth Avenue. I’m the buyer. And she’s the creative-“

DY: Chief merchandiser.

SY: Chief merchant. So that was chief merchant for the store. So it was like, oh.

DY: Really? And you look like this?

That was a big deal back then.

SY: Exactly. And then two hours later, a man comes over with a team and he’s looking at things and he says, “This is interesting, interesting.” And he starts rattling off, “I like this one, this and this.” And I’m writing it all down. And he says, “Okay, I’m not placing an order now, but I’ll place an order with you.” And I said, “Okay, what?” “Oh, it’s Bloomingdale’s.” And then I was like, “That’s a lot of things to order.” And he said, “Well, yeah, we’re going to place an order and it’s for more than one store.” I said, “Oh, I don’t think we don’t have enough money to do that, to buy the materials.” And he said, “What are you talking about? What are you doing here?” And I said, “Well, another store just came and placed a very, it looks like they’re placing a large order.” And he said, “Who was it?”

And I said, “It was Saks Fifth Avenue.” And he said, “Really?” And he said, “Really?” And I said, “Well, we can’t do this unless you could give us the money to buy the materials.” So he said, “You mean you want cash before delivery?” “Yeah.” And he said, “Well, either you’re very smart or really naively stupid.” So I said, “Well, what do you want to do?” And I was a little, I didn’t know what to do. And he said, “You know what? I want the goods, so I’m going to give you the money.” And I said, “Okay.” And then this is where the pivotal beginning was. They had the work and at first it didn’t sell very well. I called them after four weeks to find out how it was going. And he said, “It’s not doing very well. You better come over here and take a look at this so you’re out.” So we went to the Bloomingdale’s, I took a look, I understood what was happening.

DY: You understood what was selling.

SY: What was selling and what wasn’t. And I understood how we needed to make a change and what to do. And they may love all the purples and pinks and everything, but they really wanted black and pearl jewelry or whatever it was we were doing at the time. So then what happened was we decided to take him out to lunch. Someone told us you have to take them out to lunch. So we said, “Where?” And they said, “You go to the Four Seasons and sit around the fountain.” It was like, “Oh my, around the pool.” Oh my God, really? Okay, do we even know where that is? Okay, yeah, we can do that. So we go there and we said-

DY: We were so naive we were saying, “Do we pay for it or do they pay for it?”

SY: So they said, “You have to give them a kickback.” And it was, “What was that?” “Well, you have to give them some money back to warrant this.” And it was like, really? So David got an envelope, he put the money into it and we went there and we’re having this lunch. And the man says, “Well, what do you want?” I said, “Well, we’d like you to place some orders.” And he said, “Well, all right.” And then he said, “Okay.” And David then starts trying to give this man this envelope and the man says-

DY: Well, I was fumbling around. He had to pull this thing out of your pocket and I have a hard time giving, should I give him a tip before, a tip after? So I’m totally unfamiliar what to do. And I pull this thing out and it drops on the floor, and now I’m bending over awkwardly under the table. And the head buyer says, “David, what the hell are you doing?” “I’m getting an envelope.” He said, “What envelope? You dropped an envelope?” “Yes. It’s for you.” He said, “Oh, no, no, no, no. First of all, that’s not how you do it, number one, but you don’t have to give me an envelope.” “Well, the guys in the jewelry industry said that’s how it works.” He said, “No, no, no, no. They have what everyone else has. I can only get this from you so you don’t have to do anything special but deliver quality on time and work with us.”

SY: And he then tells us, and then he says, “What do you guys want?” And we said, “Well, we’d like you to fill back in on the order.” And we are thinking it’s one store, but he places an order for 17 stores.

Oh, gosh.

SY: And then Saks places an order for all their stores. And then it’s like, oh my God, how do we get the money for this? What do we do? That was the beginning of realizing that there were things that were going to happen and how were we going to do this? And people all along the way were fantastic to us. It was very rare that someone wasn’t. How to get credit from a cast or how to learn how to include other people into the vision.

DY: I think something that we’re missing here in this, I can’t remember if it’s Bloomingdale’s or Saks, because there were big chunky orders. I said, “We should not be selling too much of the same.” Our selection was incredibly broad. And that was an issue, which actually Evan, our son who’s president, Chief Creative, has changed. So we weren’t showing 27 collections. Now we’re showing nine collections, seven collections. So we were showing 27. I said, “There’s enough here that we can say, no, this style really is better than this.” And so we kind of segmented it, and I don’t know if it was Bloomingdale’s or Saks, I think it was Saks. We said, “We’re only going to sell three stores.” “No, we want seven.” I said, “Let’s try three. We don’t have the capital to do this. Let’s see how these three work. One’s the Midwest, one’s south on the coast and one’s the New York flagship.”

And I think we cut Bloomingdale’s back also. And people say, “Are you insane? You tell him don’t order for these? I mean, it’s money.” I said, “Yeah, it’s money, but it’s one, I don’t think we can deliver it. Two, I think that it’s not a smart thing to do.” It didn’t feel right. And mostly we did things that if you didn’t feel right, we said we’re not going to do it. You could have too much good.

SY: And you have to remember at the time, things were segmented. So we took a model that we used in the craft world because we were just selling our work in the craft world under David’s name. It used to be for a short while, both of our names. But I ran into difficulties with the gallery that was selling my work and I had to make a choice. So my name came off of it, off of the company. And David was the main force there at the time of designing. And so what happened was, I forgot what I was going to say.

Was segmented at the time.

DY: Well, we sold to the department stores and specialty stores with a-

SY: We set up a criteria.

DY: … stipulation that you must, it was a contract. They’d never had a contract from a jeweler. And the contract said that this is how you have to show our work. It has to be one contiguous case. It has to have our name in the showcase in two places. We supply the name and the fixtures have to be a certain shape or form or whatever, and we have to work that out, [inaudible 00:54:09] we work that out together. And they were like, “I don’t think we can do this.”

SY: And I had written, I wrote a-

DY: A sociological paper on taking your pigs to market and that basically it said that we were captive going to craft fairs and they had rules. Sometimes they took a percentage of everything you sold and then they paid you later or they didn’t pay and paid you really later, like two months later and you can’t survive like that. We were doing 30, 40 craft shows a year and you kind of felt like you were working for the man. And one of the things about the whole hippie leaving the city and being responsible for your food and garden and living your life that you weren’t living it just to work, although we were, that you had a different lifestyle, that things were much more appropriate and you weren’t just trying to build a business, which later that’s what we were trying… We just flipped it.

You were building a brand, not a business.

DY: We were. We really were.

The book details some of the more legendary models and actors that you guys have… That have worn your work and you’ve had them in campaigns. So my selfish question is, what is Kate Moss like?

DY: Oh, so you think of all the models you’d really like to know Kate?

I’m picking Kate. I mean-

DY: Why would you pick Kate?

An embarrassment of riches, but I was like, “Who’s…” [inaudible 00:55:36] like to know. Okay.

DY: Good choice. Good choice. I got to tell you, I’ve heard stories about Kate. She’s so fussy. She’ll come when she wants to arrive. None of that’s true. She’s on set at sun-up, she’s there. She works tirelessly. She has the ability to perform in front of the camera. They would say the camera loves her. She is just a beautiful soul. She’s unbelievably empathic, compassionate, funny, outrageous, party girl. Two in the morning, let’s go. I don’t know where she gets the energy. She’s got a great resiliency and I never feel like I’m talking to a star. I always feel that she’s… When you’re in a room with Kate and you’re having a conversation, eyes lock, you’re the only person in the room, she’s talking to you, she’s connected. And then boom, she’s off to another. I’m not saying she’s a butterfly, but when she’s there, she’s absolutely a hundred percent there. So there’s that incredible intimacy you get from a human being that’s incredibly genuine. And she’s a genuine live wire, incredibly talented.

And when someone reads this book cover to cover and they put it down, what would you want that one thing to take away from this experience to really know about the both of you?

DY: Here we are, Sibyl’s a runaway. I’m a hitchhiker, dyslexic, major, ADD, flipping from this to that, that the only thing that kept us together and focused was the love and passion of art. It’s something that fed us. We did what we want… We went to pleasure, not to excessive pleasure. We went to… I’m very disciplined and I know what I have to do and I do what… I was a track runner. I was almost going to the Olympics, but I pulled up with a knee issue. I was focused, focused, focused. And being ADD, ADHD, I was just ADD, totally distracted about things. But when you are working on a painting and when you are working on a sculpture, you realize that that feeds you in a way like nothing else can feed you other than loving someone, including loving yourself. And I think the act of art is love.

And if you can find something that you love, they say you never work a day again in your life. You love to do it. When are you retiring? Retiring from what? From something that I love? Why would I stop doing something that I love? So if the takeaway is for me, one is the partnership that Sibyl and I have, the collaboration, by the way, collaboration is fucking messy. It’s like, “No, you are wrong.” There are absolutes that get thrown out, but underneath it you love each other. And we have a lot of similar things that are the same, but we have a lot of things that aren’t the same. And that friction is part of love. We’d never go to sleep angry. We understand, “Okay, let’s work it out later. We don’t agree.” Hey, that’s life, but we know we love each other and I know it… This didn’t happen with one person.

And as the years went on, has your sort of creative process shifted or changed or is it kind of the same as it ever was?

DY: Well, the same part as it ever was… As it ever was, that’s the talking [inaudible 00:59:47]. I sketch all the time and I’ll have periods where I won’t. But then I go back and I look at my book and I start sketching again so the river that runs through this, what Sibyl likes to say, is this creative… It’s a log and one thing leads to the next. And I’m in the world looking at technologies and I said, “What if we use this?” And technologies from anywhere in the world, you nano-codings and I love to see what’s happening. The fact that we can take models in 3D CAD computer and we can adjust them in a way that you can almost feel like you’re manipulating clay. It’s that moldable because you become familiar with the technologies and that you can reproduce things by 22% larger, 13.5% smaller, and you can do carvings with ZBrush rather than cutting into…

And then you can get someone who’s an engraver that’s an artist engraver does a magnificent work and now I see he’s in our shop and I say, “Yacov, what are you doing?” He said, “Well, I’m doing ZBrush.” He said, “It’s better, it’s quick, it’s fast. I take it out. I do cleanup with the carving knives.” So I’m still in the shop and I’m inspired by hands-on. And I’m inspired by the ability of what technology can do, not just replicating, but enlarging and shrinking and actually from a block of imaginary clay, make a piece. So I’m still working there. Our son clearly is taking… The business has gotten to a size that the scale has to be dealt with. You can’t do it like craft show, so you have to prepare six months out. We’re two years planned out for certain basics. And then we have this, about 20% of production is pronto modo, which could be six months, it’s online, but for the most part we’re almost… We’re a year and a half out. Supply lines and whatnot. And it’s a big business. I think counting the jewelers in the hands in the world where about easy 4,000 people are involved in making their livings off our creativity and we have 50, 60 stores and still building.

Well, yeah. That brings me to my next question. You guys have had men’s collections for some time, but it’s growing. And how has that concept of jewelry for men evolved from your point of view? How has it evolving? What is that trajectory like?

DY: Well, I think the trajectory is that men are much more comfortable wearing jewelry. And I think that the way we make jewelry, I can tell you that I wear a bracelet, there it is. I wear… Let’s see, where is this thing?

Which one is that?

DY: I wear a new ring just to see how it fits. And I have an issue somewhere on an edge. I wear our watch and I think the head designer… Evan is the design director, but there is someone that’s in the weeds doing the designs, loves to make jewelry. He’s a RISD student from way back and he’s excellent and Evan knows how to work with him. So I’m a designer. Evan’s a design director.

SY: But also Evan works on the original drawings as well, like you do.

DY: Oh yeah. But Evan brings in a concept. He said, “This is the concept. I want to go to Arizona. I want this, I want jewelry to look like Arizona, so let’s fly out to Arizona, spend three, four days out there, five days and let’s get a sense.” He’s actually a very big thinker. He’s fearless and he has great aesthetics. So that became his business. He runs that. I just have slight oversight. Actually, I don’t even have veto power.

SY: When Evan was young-

DY: It’s his.

SY: This was another thing. When Evan was young and he wanted to… He loves stones, always has, he would go on trips out to Arizona in different places-

DY: The Tucson show.

SY: And meet gem collectors, these men, and he would end up in a trailer somewhere trying to negotiate for a specific specimen that he had heard this person had, and then he would be able to buy it and bring it back and we set up in our loft a laboratory system for Evan, and he would cut those opals and stones on his own. So he always has had a love for stones. He has an extraordinary mineral collection that is at the Museum of Natural History, and he’s now developing something new, which I’m not going to talk about/ if you ever want to, I’m sure he’s someone that… He has extraordinary things. But your question is, he’s been doing this I think his whole life and it’s a love of his and it’s a passion, and he does his own collections now even of you asking about high jewelry.

Yeah, I was going to say high jewelry. You guys had your first high jewelry collection in 2010, which is kind of a world unto itself.

DY: Yes, it is.

But as you guys are, as true artists, moving into that echelon of probably a lot of sharp elbows too, in that world, what was that like having that first big collection? It’s been almost 15 years now, but what was that like for you guys to see that first high jewelry collection?

DY: Well, I could say first of all, that the majority of the pieces were Evan’s. So it was proud father, proud mother. It was in Basel at a vernissage above the Three Kings, fancy hotel, and it was mostly it was stone centric. He was just became an aficionado of beautifully cut stones. He’d often buy stone to… I would say not often, almost all the time. He’d recut them. So he looked for value. I said, “Yeah, looks sort of nice.” He said, “No, no, no, it’s a great stone, dad.” I said, “I don’t know, it’s sort of dead spots.” He said, “Yeah, it’s not cut right.” And he partnered with people on buying stones who knew more about sapphires than he would ever know. So he was very collaborative.

SY: And he loves learning.

DY: Yeah. And he wants to do it away from us because we have more than big shoes. We have big mouths and big brains, and we share too much of what we feel it should be. And it’s like, “Hey, who was telling you what to do when you opened your buckle business? Who was telling you how to market your work to Neiman Saks or not?” It’s real difficult not to want to, “Oh, I know you’re going to make that… I went down that road. It’s stupid. Don’t do that.” But he had to find out for himself, and-

SY: He’s very, very-

DY: He’s a smart cookie. He really is. And I think we probably hover over… We were hovering over him more than we should have, but he made an incredibly beautiful, innovative seven or eight, 10 years of high jewelry and things that I would look at. And if I didn’t know who did it… Because it’s not particularly signature, it’s exploratory. It’s fun. It’s setting sapphires and rubies and tiny opals in aluminum. What the fuck? In aluminum? Yeah. You make big things and gems set into aluminum and they’re very light. So he got it. And he partners with the best in the business. He’s very likable. He’s very curious. He’s very funny. He’s a keeper.

What are your hopes for the future for David Yurman, the brand? It took you in a time machine and I brought you a hundred years in the future. What would you hope to see?

SY: I have no… I don’t know that I could answer. What would I hope to see? Oh, that people were… Do you know that there was still the joy and pleasure that customers get in experiencing our jewelry, experiencing… Having the store experiencing. That there’s still that element of pleasure and fun that takes place in our stores.

And Sybil, I was wondering, can you describe David in three words? If you had to describe David in three words, what would those three words be?

SY: He’s curious. There’s a delight. He takes delight in the world and in people. He’s a great dancer.

And a dancer? Okay. I was going to go with cowboy, but okay, dancer, that works. David what are… Dancing Cowboy. Okay. Why not? David, if you had to describe Sybil in three words, what would you say?

DY: I would say compassionate, beautiful, great dancer.

Thank you to my guests, Sybil and David Yurman, as well as to everyone at Phaidon for making this episode happen. The editor of The Grand Tourist is Stan Hall. To keep this going, don’t forget to visit our website and sign for our newsletter, The Grand Tourist Curator at thegrandtourist.net, and follow me on Instagram @danrubinstein. Don’t forget to follow The Grand Tourist on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen and leave us a rating or comment. Every little bit helps. Til next time!

(END OF TRANSCIPT)