By Elizabeth Bonner Czapski
Photography by John O’Hagan
A South Carolina interior designer adapts her skills to create distinctive jewelry in a seaside business that fits her role as a mother of two.
Sometimes inspiration strikes in unlikely circumstances. For Lissy Rawl, it all started during a season of sleepless nights with her second baby. The new mother of two had just left her job in interior design to stay at home with her girls, leaving her creative mind longing for another outlet. With resources left over from her design days and her Hilton Head Island home as a muse, Lissy began using the late nights to craft coastal-influenced jewelry made from an imaginative assortment of textiles.
“I kept envisioning a jewelry line that tied my interior design background in,” Lissy says. “I feel like I am making wearable art where the design is taken from the interiors or architecture of a house.”
Lissy’s signature Set Sail collection, launched in 2015, combines hammered metal shapes with hand-sewn textile accents, fashioned in the same way a sail is constructed. Offerings have expanded to earrings, bracelets, and necklaces in a wide variety of materials, including metals, pearls, beads, rope, as well as furs, feathers, snakeskin, and oyster shells.
Any piece can be customized, and most are made to order. The Schooner Earrings, which are teardrop pendants, are a popular starting point for personalization. In the summer and especially around Mother’s Day, customers gravitate toward mother-of-pearl and the Lilly Pulitzer fabrics the business recently added.
Enter to win a pair of Schooner Freshwater Coin Post earrings with Lilly Pulitzer’s popular Breakwater print (pictured above), and be sure to visit littlefishboateak.com for their Mother’s Day Sale May 1–10 and receive 20 percent off your purchase with code: mom.
Discover inspiring style ideas, seasonal recipes, and more by ordering your Southern Lady subscription today!
