The Story Behind Our Handcrafted Jewelry

A note from Karen Hartman, Founder & Designer, Seattle

All my jewelry is a meditation on how to sculpt metal to catch the light.

Left to my own devices, I will spend all my time watching the light change over the course of a day. That obsession is where every piece begins — not with a sketch, but with a question: what does this surface do when the light hits it at a different angle? A slight curve or texture can change everything.

I design all of Astor & Orion's jewelry in ZBrush, the same digital sculpting software used by Wētā FX and Industrial Light & Magic. Every piece starts as a 3D model I sculpt by hand, and that model goes straight to casting. No translation layer, no interpretation. What I sculpt is what gets made. That precision is what makes this handcrafted jewelry in the most literal sense: one designer's hand, carried through to the finished piece.

Astor & Orion came out of a specific era of my life. I'd spent years working inside large-scale manufacturing in Asia — close enough to global supply chains to understand exactly what they cost. When I had my son, something shifted. If I was going to build something, it had to try to be part of the solution. That conviction took years to turn into a brand, but it never changed shape.

Which brought me to the hardest part: finding a casting partner who brought the same love of process to manufacturing that I bring to designing. I found one — someone who had spent years building systems they genuinely believed in: water filtration, low employee turnover, full transparency. They work with us in small batches and hold third-party certification by Sedex SMETA 4-Pillar.

Every piece is cast from recycled metals and designed so that when you're done with it, it can be fully recycled. That's been the intention from the start.

What you end up with is jewelry made by someone who can't stop thinking about how light moves across a surface. Pieces shaped by years of travel, a deep fascination with art history, and a lifelong obsession with mythology and symbolism — which is why they end up feeling genuinely original and a little hard to place. That thinking is in the object. You'll see it every time you put it on.

Learn more about our sustainability practices and circular design approach.