atelier
W
{French for a workshop or a studio, especially 66
WBM october 2013
orking out of a kitchen closet crammed with
beads and wire, Miriam Oehrlein developed
the line of jewelry that caught the eye of
Belk’s Southern Designer Showcase competition
as part of the store’s 125th anniversary celebration
in 2012.
It took 30 minutes to unpack her supplies and another 30
minutes to pack them up every day the stay-at-home mom
chose to work. But beauty was born from this chaos and
Miriam O’s designs were among the 15 chosen out of 200 for
the Belk promo.
With her royalties she invested in a potter’s bench and
a drafting chair that she set up in her dining room, while
a two-story backyard garage was refurbished by architect/
builder Bryan Humphrey, furniture and fixture designer Susan
Covington and artist/painter Michelle Connolly.
“We’re going to build you a proper bench,” she recalls
Humphrey saying. “Bryan Humphrey is a very fastidious man;
he’s that guy,” Miriam says.
But she was afraid if she had a clean space she might lose her
creativity.
“Bryan said, ‘Miriam, you can mess it
up after I leave,’” she says.
Screened by distressed church doors
from her late father’s Greenville, South
Carolina, church, Miriam’s new jewelry
bench is equipped with deep shelves
and built-in drawers fabricated by Joe
Hammett. After she learned upcycled
metalsmithing techniques from John C.
Campbell Folk School instructors Tom
and Kay Patterson, Hammett mounted
Miriam’s anvil to the bench so that it
swivels but does not scratch the surface
of the wood.
With white walls to see the true color
of what she’s working on, Miriam’s
studio is enveloped in old tobacco
drying barn wood from Bath, North
Carolina. The load was provisioned
by Covington, who also found the
distressed cabinets installed in her stu-dio
showroom foyer. In Covington’s
workshop, missing doors were created
to match the cracked green patina of
the original. Miriam uses the space to
Top: Tobacco drying barn wood, provisioned by Susan Covington of SAC Art, was used to plank
ceilings and floors of this artist’s new backyard studio/showroom. SAC Art also upfit the distressed
display cabinet. Bottom left: Old church doors from Greenville, South Carolina, are mounted on
barn sliders to open and close Miriam Oehrlein’s jewelry bench. Custom cabinets were made
by Joe Hammett, lighting fixtures by Louise Gaskell. Right: A swinging porch bed and outdoor
shower have changed the way the Oehrlein’s interact with their backyard.