Blog-series: No Step Wasted, Gratitude for the Journey #1 | The Silversmith: Casting Purpose from Metal and Meaning
There’s a certain alchemy in creating something meaningful with your hands, especially when what you’re shaping carries a deeper symbolic message. In the fall of 2007, I began a four-month internship at Pyrrha Design, a globally celebrated Vancouver-based jewelry studio whose ethos revolves around ancestral wisdom, authenticity, and sustainability.
I entered Pyrrha as an eager learner, unaware that this brief chapter would echo through my life for years to come. Only in hindsight do I fully grasp how deeply it shaped me. Or perhaps it was never about learning something new, but rather awakening something ancient within me, drawn instinctively to Pyrrha’s mystic ethos, their reverence for symbolism, and their commitment to sustainability.
It wasn’t just an internship; it was a homecoming to values I hadn't yet found words for.
At Pyrrha, I was immersed in the complete, hands-on process of creating handcrafted jewelry. The studio worked primarily with reclaimed sterling silver and gold, championing environmentally responsible design long before sustainability became a trend.
I was involved in every stage of production: molding, casting, sanding, polishing, and finishing pieces to be prepared for global distribution. I also participated in quality control and packaging, ensuring that every item left the studio not just looking exquisite but feeling sacred.
Each Pyrrha piece is inspired by antique wax seals from the Victorian era, carrying with it ancestral messages - like “truth,” “strength,” “hope,” and “transformation.” These weren’t just aesthetic objects; they were talismans; small, symbolic vessels meant to protect, empower, and remind.
To handle each one felt like touching a whisper from the past. And it taught me to treat craftsmanship as a dialogue between time, intention, and the unseen.
Working at Pyrrha was more than a technical experience, it was a philosophical initiation into what it means to create with reverence. I saw how materials could carry stories. How design could be a form of storytelling. How objects can hold memory, lineage, and legacy.
Through fire, metal, and human touch, we were shaping symbols that would live on people's bodies, near their hearts, gifted between generations, worn during life’s biggest moments. And that made me realize: what we make matters.
In a world often obsessed with scale and speed, Pyrrha was doing the opposite, slowing down, choosing intention, honoring the Earth. Their commitment to sustainability and meaning showed me that creation is not just a skillset, it’s a value system.
And it resonated deeply with me: as someone whose work would later center around intergenerational healing, ancestral reconnection, and spiritual embodiment, this was one of my earliest exposures to how physical form can carry emotional, cultural, and sacred weight.
Pyrrha’s jewelry isn’t just deeply personal, it’s culturally resonant. Their pieces have been worn by Jennifer Lawrence, Julia Roberts, Chris Hemsworth, and many others. They’ve appeared in Game of Thrones, The Vampire Diaries, Once Upon a Time, and a range of films and series where mythology and symbolism take center stage.
To know I was part of creating something that ended up not only in people's daily lives, but also on global screens and red carpets, was both surreal and grounding. It reminded me that the small, quiet acts of craftsmanship we practice in solitude can ripple outward in powerful, unpredictable ways.
Today, as the founder of Sumati Group, my work exists at the intersection of art, regenerative systems, education, spiritual inquiry, and cultural storytelling. It might look far from a jewelry studio, but the values are the same.
Whether I’m building a Living Lab for future leadership or designing a workshop on ancestral embodiment, I carry with me what Pyrrha taught me:
Respect the materials: from Earth metals to human hearts.
Trust the process: the fire is part of the transformation.
Let the story shine through: every creation has its own voice.
Pyrrha taught me to think like a craftsperson in everything I do: to create with care, meaning, and legacy in mind. That internship wasn’t just a line on a resume. It was a deep shaping force, a spark that lit the early flames of what would become my life’s mission.
No step wasted. Just silver, story, and the slow shaping of something sacred…
No Step Wasted, Gratitude for the Journey is a blog series of reflections from my interdisciplinary life. Each post is a love letter to the generalist’s path, to trusting that every chapter, even the ones we don’t yet understand, may one day reveal their place in our deepest calling.
