Blog

Join us for a live event on Instagram Live (@compassrosedesign) Thursday September 10th at 5:30pm PST Antique Button Jewelry, 1870-1970 We'll have a beautiful selection of limited edition buttons - Bohemian glass and Victorian mirror buttons of exquisite quality - AT VIP PRICES. Join our newsletter for a reminder. Join our newsletter for a Trunk Show reminder!

We also had a close call with the CZU August Fire at my brother's house, my childhood home, but have been lucky. I went to college at UC Santa Cruz, spent childhood summers camping in Pescadero and Big Basin and a myriad memories scattered in those mountains. Yet California needs fire. Fire is part of this place. Fire and other land management techniques are part of a healthy California ecosystem. The hours I spent researching ethnobotanist Kat Anderson's work at UCLA's American Indian Studies Center on native Californian landscape management were many. This brings me to baskets and fire.  The majestic and...

At long last! Limited Edition BAY AREA mini-collection launches next week!! These beauties - Oakland, the Bay Bridge and The Golden Gate Bridge are newly finished! Each is made from a vintage teaspoon sculpted into a pendant in recycled sterling silver or bronze. Every piece has a unique history with deep roots in California and the complex stories and beautiful people that have created the beautiful Bay Area. Did you know the "Golden Gate" is the name of the strait that connects the San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean. Here it is before the bridge construction started in 1933....

Well, writing about the musical notes played off the butt of a 15th century painting is new territory. Hieronymus Bosch, born circa 1450 and named for his home city of 's Hertogenbosch - called 'Den Bosch (pronounced "den BOSS") happens to be where I spent the summer of my 16th year. For me Den Bosch was a place of outdoor cafes, shopping, and making wistful eye contact with Dutch boys at the open market. It's where, with my sweet host family, I tried my first Gin and Tonic. It's also the birthplace of my relative Thomas van Giesen in 1812. My...