The Woman Behind the Collection
Elizabeth’s love of natural finery began long before she can remember. Born to a jeweler, Elizabeth’s father taught her everything there was to know about wearable art and the mastery of design and technique. As a young child, Elizabeth would take naps on the floor of her family jewelry store. In time, she designed her own lapis and cloisonne beaded necklaces that her father would sell in the shop. She was enamored by the collision of the natural world and the artist’s brain at work. She perceived it immediately: like each of us, each piece has a story.
-
Elizabeth was born and raised along the rocky coast of New Hampshire—just minutes from Elizabeth Henry Collection’s Portsmouth storefront. She spent her childhood summers on Cape Cod, attended university in the Lakes and Mountains region of Maine, and has now settled on the North Shore of Massachusetts with her family. She is, therefore, just as much ‘at home’ in New England as she is in a jewelry store.
In her own home, just as in her profession, she seeks to cultivate all that is true, good, and beautiful. She is a dedicated mother to four adventurous young children and when she has a spare moment, you can find her toiling in her temperamental vegetable garden, painting landscapes from the window of her attic, and finding the next hiking trail or secret swimming hole with her children.
While wearable art has been her métier, compelled also by a love of words, Elizabeth formally studied English literature. Subsequently, her foremost love of jewelry launched her across the nation to study at the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) in southern California, where she received the industry’s most prestigious credential, that of the Graduate Gemologist. Ever since, she has established her family’s brand and legacy, working with gemstones, precious metals, and their uniquely beautiful wearers. Today, she serves as a Partner at Market Square Jewelers. After fifteen years in estate and antique jewelry, building a successful six-store family chain, Elizabeth is now writing her own story. Equipped with her artistic aptitude, breadth of historical expertise, entrepreneurial spirit, and penchant for story-telling, it is her eager hope that this one will help other courageous women tell theirs.
The Era of You
Elizabeth Henry Collection is a reintroduction of heirloom pieces transformed into modern rarities, each from a range of historical eras using period masters and modern techniques. Each of these ten historical eras articulates a distinct persona. Elizabeth seeks to assist women as they reclaim the many facets of their selfhood through jewelry, pursuing and embracing the era that feels most true to their contemporary self. One must query: which persona speaks most veritably to me? As such, each encounter with Elizabeth Henry Collection is designed to be an origin story of the self—a reincarnation of one’s past and an expression of one’s present (and that which one wishes to become). In the donning of art on one’s body, broken binaries—the transcendent and the immanent, the material and the immaterial, the historical and the potential—are disrupted and coalesced. Elizabeth aspires to create and curate extraordinary pieces that all women may experience this remarkable coalescence for themselves.
The Icon
The lioness is the quintessential icon of female power; even her stance exudes confidence. Inspired by this timeless creature, Elizabeth Henry Collection imparts an understated truth: a woman’s confidence is her most striking adornment.
The Storefront
In June 2023, Elizabeth Henry Collection opened a showroom on Congress Street in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Upon entering the store, one enters a new domain, a domain of warm, elevated tones—cream and chartreuse—and natural, raw textures—hard mahogany wood and soft velvet. The storefront is subtle and sophisticated; it allows the personas behind each era to speak for themselves.
Elizabeth Henry Collection is intended to be a breath of fresh air, diverging from one’s preconceptions of a ‘store.’ Elizabeth Henry Collection is not a place to ‘be sold’; rather, it is a place to explore and learn—about the pieces and about one’s self. It is a place to cherish beauty—the beauty on display and one’s own distinct beauty.
The Elizabeth Henry Collection Woman
Elizabeth Henry Collection is designed for the eclectic, modern woman. She is tough. She is courageous. She is daring. She is authentic. She stands out in a crowd. She knows age is just a number, and her best years are yet to come. She looks to leave a legacy. She treats herself unapologetically. She showcases her beauty unabashedly. Most of all, she loves a good story.