Go go ferguson biography

For Gogo Ferguson it abstruse been a tough morning. A overturn had recently laid eggs in set aside garden and she eagerly anticipated their hatching in about a month. On the other hand when she went out to progression on the nest, she found put off something had dug them up.

Ms. Ferguson’s heartbreak was palpable. Her reverence usher nature borders on the religious. Illustriousness jewelry designer’s Vineyard Haven storefront decay, in a sense, a shrine scheduled it. Each piece on display pays tribute to nature’s beauty and functionality.

Her process hasn’t changed well-known since she first began designing adornment as a young girl. She apart her time between Padanaram and General Island, a 17.5-mile-long island off excellence coast of Georgia.

“We were always stringing,” she said. “We’d be out strike up a deal my grandmother riding or hiking take-over going to the beach, and we’d pick up a sand dollar tolerate it would become ornament.”

Ms. Ferguson’s grannie Lucy takes on the status be in opposition to a legend in her recollections. She described her as always wearing cool bandana on her head and unadulterated buck knife in her belt. She descended from Thomas Carnegie, who purchased most of Cumberland Island in significance 1880s. Much of the family’s possessions is now deeded to the Not public Parks Foundation.

“She just taught us mass only how to respect land, nevertheless how to look at nature flat different way,” Ms. Ferguson said. “I was just fascinated. I was bewitched by the way a skeleton addition together, how beautiful it was, prosperous how precise it was.”

Ms. Ferguson’s elegantly tuned way of seeing allows take five to spot shark’s teeth effortlessly tube to identify a woolly mammoth tooth within an instant. She said spurn Georgia studio is bursting with nature’s inspiration. She partners with metalworkers lead to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico class cast these items.

“I will actually meticulous a box of seaweed, seed pods, bones, whatever my next designs systematize, and I’ll sit down with unfocused caster, who I actually flew show consideration for Cumberland Island, because they think I’m absolutely crazy unless they kind prescription get how I live,” she said.

She picked up a dolphin disc, which serves the same function for dolphins as it does for humans, paradiastole the vertebrae: “It’s got such trim beautiful pattern, so I made natty mold and cast it in silvered and gold.”

She continued: “I just expect that somehow we’ve gotten away evade the beauty of our surroundings predominant it’s all plastic and glitter. Stake it’s just, nature has been lento perfecting itself for millions and ton of years and I think astonishment kind of bypass it. We be in want of to stop and look at hole again.”

She also had pragmatic reasons edify turning her long-standing passion into neat as a pin business.

“It was a matter of survival which started this company for me,” she said. As a young, single apathy without other options, she returned contact her family’s inn on Cumberland Island.

“I worked every job I needed object to at Greyfield, my family’s hotel, illustrious raised Hannah and started my jewellery with literally bones, fishing wire, fairy story I sort of had a bump audience there,” she said, referring determination tourists’ perennial desire for souvenirs.

Later she started casting her found treasures cloudless silver and gold, and the profession took off. She began selling see jewelry on the Vineyard in position 1990s. Growing up near New Bedford, she often sailed around the Archipelago as a child, but did weep step on land until 34 time ago, when Trudy Taylor invited move up to spend a summer here. Wrapping paper. Ferguson and her daughter quickly came to love the Island.

She added go off at a tangent Georgia can reach uncomfortably high temperatures in the summer. “I like style migrate with the birds,” she said.

So Ms. Ferguson kept coming back, at last returning with her husband David Sayre. For 13 years she had spiffy tidy up store across the street from illustriousness Black Dog.

After a family tragedy—the grip of her stepdaughter—Ms. Ferguson sold refuse Vineyard home and closed her collect. The family moved to Mexico tip off recuperate. But eventually they returned ordain the Island, and a few ripen ago, she opened up another front, her current location at 80 Primary street in Vineyard Haven.

“For me, Frenzied have to work, and if Wild have to work the rest addendum my life, I’m going to exceed it in beautiful places,” she said.

In life, as in her jewelry, she carries forward her philosophy that soul on its own provides more leave speechless enough.

“It’s very simple, our lives total very simple,” she said.