Bing Bang Boom by Jessica Iredale

Karmic boomerang, “That’s how jewelry designer Anna Sheffield describes her experience in New York City.  “Anything you want to do here, you throw it out there and it comes back to you,” she says.  “I’ve never been anywhere that has such a return on things.”
If that’s the case, Sheffield, who grew up in New Mexico, must have some seriously spotless karma.  Her brief but bountiful career designing mixed-metal collection Bing Bang has been marked by several lucky breaks that include, in the past six months alone, collaborations with Marc Jacobs and Douglas Little.  Not bad for someone whose foray into jewelry was “completely accidental.”
The boomerang took off four years ago in San Francisco, Sheffield, who studied sculpture, blacksmithing and

metal smithing at San Francisco’s Academy of Art, was set on a fine-art path when a visit to a friend’s boutique, Behind the Post Office, turned her limited jewelry making experience (a few college classes) into an unexpected detour.  Sheffield showed up wearing her own handmade ring and was asked to bring in a few samples.  “I was in the process of trying to launch my fine-art career,” she recalls, “and I thought, Well it couldn’t hurt to make a little jewelry and see if people like it.”  Within a week, her hammered bronze, silver and steel pieces had sold out.  Bing Bang was born—but sculpture wasn’t out of the picture.  A year later, Sheffield relocated to Brooklyn “to see which worked better for me, fine art or jewelry,” she says.  Fast-forward three years, and it’s obvious which won out: Sheffield now has two lines, Bing Band and the more upscale 88 collection, both of which have been picked up by Barneys New York, Harvey Nichols and Le Bon Marche.  Bing Bang retails for less than $500, and 88, for less than $2000.
At first sight, Sheffield, 31, seems an unlikely source for sweethearts and keepsakes, the theme of her spring-summer 2006 collections.  With both arms fully sleeved in tattoos and her septum pierced with a gold hoop, she looks more suited to fronting a punk band than designing lockets and heart-shaped charms.  But her body art and jewelry have a common thread: Both are highly personal.  Her tattoos, she explains, were done by close friends and people she cares about, including her boyfriend, Scott Campbell, who runs a tattoo parlor located in Williamsburg’s Saved Gallery of Art and Craft, which also carries her line.
The collections reverberate with beneath-the-surface significance, from their names (Bing Bang for the sound of her hammer and anvil; 88 is a lucky number) to the shapes of individual lockets, reliquaries and charms, such as an owl, a Burmese symbol of luck.  “I love the idea of a keepsake or something talismanic that represents something to you,” she says.  Much of the collection is inspired by the “pared-down, function-over-form simplicity” of the New Mexican desert where she grew up—less for the Native American aesthetic than for its tradition of craftsmanship.  “It’s the idea that somebody’s hand-hammered that circle into that shape,” Sheffield says.  “It didn’t just come out of a machine that way.”
It was the designer’s knack for personalization that piqued Marc Jacob’s interest this past August when he was looking for a jeweler to accessorize his spring 2006 runway show.  Sheffield got the gig based on her talent, but it was her friend and Jacob’s fit model, Shelly Zander, who got her in the door.  “Shelly always wears my jewelry,” Sheffield says.  “I think Marc spent a lot of time looking at it during fittings, and eventually he asked her about it.”  Sheffield had two weeks to put together a collection of roughly 30 pieces in a schoolgirl theme, some of which will be sold under the Bing Bang/Marc Jacobs label in his stores.  “it was the idea of something really sweet and sparkly and sort of heirloom-ish for prom night,” Sheffield says of the jewels, which include everything from diamond hearts and stars to necklaces dangling with diary keys.
For scented-candle-man Douglas Little, whom Sheffield met at New York’s 26th street flea market, she designed a locket he filled with a specially created scent, an item now part of the holiday collection at Barneys New York.
Now Sheffield’s focus is on expanding Bing Bang, possibly to include a gemstone collection.  And although she remains mum on the subject of new offers, future collaborations are definitely of interest.  “Working with someone as amazing and creative and tremendous as Marc Jacobs taught me how fun it can be to design with another person’s aesthetic in mind,” she says.  “He’s so tapped into something—he has this way of coming up with amazing, amazing ideas.  I hope I can be like that.”