Friends of JUDY

For her fans of 30 years, Judy Geib is a jeweler's jeweler. For young designers, she's something rarer: a role model. 

- LYNN YAEGER 

“I ’m getting ready to make a long cartoon character necklace in gold with stones interspersed—for myself!” Judy Geib tells me when I visit her jewelry atelier, a vast, crammed space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, that was once an air conditioner factory.

Who else would contemplate employing the finest materials in the service of Foghorn Leghorn, the Tasmanian Devil, and Bugs Bunny? Geib’s startling inventiveness has captivated her audience, a veritable cult, since she made her first piece, a pair of opal earrings with surprising enamel backs, in 1996.

I became a loyal member of this coterie when I first encountered her work at the late, lamented Barneys—it was a necklace of twisted flat letters, a nutty calligraphy in 22K gold and cabochon rubies. It fairly leaped out of the case at me, and though its price prohibited me from hanging this alphabet around my neck, I never forgot it.