Full Circle - An Artist's Transformation

Written by Christy Wylie

Aquamarine, tourmaline, Peruvian opal, tanzanite—dangling jewels move like dancers between coins of gold and swirls of sterling silver, changing and shifting with the light. Such is the exquisitely feminine and elusive way of jewelry designer, Dalia Alfandary, who, from Canada to Bali to Texas, has etched her eclectic design signature indelibly across the globe.

Born to Yugoslavian parents in Dimona, Israel, Alfandary has resided in more exotic places than most of us have visited. At age six, her family had moved to Canada. “My earliest memories of jewelry take place in the basement of our first house in Toronto,” recalls Alfandary. It was there her father, Rafael Alfandary, who would become a celebrity jewelry designer of his time, created his original pieces of rough-hewn brass and glass. Throughout the ‘70s, he did the crowns for the Miss Canada pageants and created custom pieces for icons such as Mohammed Ali and Jackie Onassis.

Alfandary’s relationship with her father wasn’t always easy. After her parents divorced when she was eight years old, she continued to live with her mother in Toronto until her rebellious nature earned her a one-way ticket to Austin, Texas, where her father resided. “I was a naughty girl,” she recalls, “and struggling to understand an estranged father, fit in with his “new” family, and missing home drove me to run away at age 16.” Despite their fiery relationship, Alfandary credits her father with her confidence as a designer. “His technique, his style and his character are the basis of my own. He showed me that you can make anything fabulous.”

After studying at the famous jewelry school in Paris, Texas and working in her father’s Austin store for a stint, Alfandary traveled to Paris, to Yugoslavia, and to Israel, where she went to work in a jewelry kibbutz and immersed herself in learning all the things she loved. “This was the first major transformation of my life,” says Alfandary. “When I arrived back in Austin, the concerns of my youth now seemed materialistic and spoiled.”

With her new appreciation, Alfandary dove headfirst into the jewelry business, dedicating herself night and day to her work. At age 19, she opened her own shop on Austin’s famous 6th street. As her skill and reputation as a designer grew over the years, so did her propensity to put work first. “I became a workaholic,” she says. Not long after taking a job as a diamond grader for a company in San Francisco, in 1990, Alfandary had another eye-opening transformation. “I was at the top of my career and felt I had it all.”

One late night as she sat alone in her office, she contemplated the word “compassion”, appealing to the universe to help her understand its meaning. The next day, Alfandary had a serious car accident resulting in a head injury. In an instant, she lost everything—her ability to do the simple things required to live and to function as a jeweler. At only 24 years of age, she was forced to resign from her job. In treatment, she came to understand her own pain and that of others who had suffered even greater injuries. “It was humbling beyond,” she says. When told that she faced a seven-year recovery period, Alfandary decided to hang up her tools and set off in search of a fresh start.

“This trip was about letting go,” she recalls. There are moments crystallized in my memory. “I was walking down a sidewalk in an Italian village when it started to rain and I saw a postcard hanging in a window. It said “Bali” and showed little huts floating on beautiful, turquoise water. I saw solitude, and I wanted to go there.” The next day, Alfandary headed to Indonesia, postcard in hand. Arriving in Bali, she traveled by motorbike to the secluded, cliff-side Uluwatu where she found her hut with no running water. “In Bali, I didn’t have to navigate what had been my real world,” she observes. “I was operating in this childlike way, and that was perfect in this simpler place.”

Over the months, she brushed her teeth in the ocean, dropped the twenty-eight pairs of shoes she acquired in Italy, along with any notions she had brought with her. “Who was this person with whom I used to identify?” she asked herself. Each day, she felt stronger and freer—closer to being healed. She knew that what she was learning was profound, but even as she had epiphanies, she let them go, only to rediscover them again the next day, and to let them go again. The fleeting of her thoughts, which at first had seemed a disability, became liberating.

“I soon realized that, in this place, I could do everything I wanted to do with jewelry,” she says. And so she stayed. Drawing on memories that were perforated in her mind, but that her hands knew so well, she began again to design. “It came so easily,” she recollects. “It was like sitting in a sandbox and building sandcastles.” Eventually, she was able to reenter the jewelry business world on her own terms.

By the end of her twenty-year stretch which started out as a sabbatical, Alfandary had become an internationally acclaimed jewelry designer with her own design center in Bali and two workshops in Java. Most recently, she has added her design studio and boutique in Austin, now the birthplace of each up-market design bearing the ‘dalia’ trademark. “Each of my pieces is like a tapestry,” Alfandary points out. “The different techniques and textures create layers.” By way of the Bali design center where a concept is translated from pencil sketch into metals, it travels through a traditional Javanese workshop, where native artisans spin lacy webs of silver and gold filigree—an important part of the ‘dalia’ aesthetic. Then, onto her westernized factory (also located in Java), where semi-precious stones are set and various components are soldered. Eventually, each piece comes full circle, finding its way back to Austin where it was conceived.

When asked which place, of all the places she has lived, defines her most, Alfandary replies in her typically ephemeral way, “All of them and none of them.” She now lives in Austin, Texas with her husband, who she met in Bali, and her two sons. “For all my adventures, getting married and becoming a mother has been my greatest life transformation,” she says. “My parents raised me to be independent and not to believe I should get married and have a family, so for that to become my reality has been the biggest surprise. I can be an artist and create amazing things, but when I gave birth to my children—that was my greatest accomplishment.”

Whether it was spending a lifetime moving around the globe, or losing the memories that formed her identity, Alfandary embraces the temporal nature of life. This sentiment is echoed in a quotation she has dangling from a bejeweled chandelier in her design space: “It doesn’t matter if your chains are made of gold or made of steel as long as you can take them off.”

Visit dalia, designer showroom and retail located at 3900 RR 620, Austin. View her gallery at www.dalia.us or call 646.469.6600.

Christy Wylie is a writer and the owner of Mantra Marketing Services. She lives in Austin, Texas.