Jeweler Alex Sepkus

By Kathleen Fitzpatrick

 

People try to associate my jewelry with something they understand," says designer Alex Sepkus. "They think it‘s Byzantine, 19th-century; but it‘s just me. There‘s no term I can use to describe it. I don‘t follow any rules of design. It‘s simply the things I do with my fingers that transfer the idea from my head to the material." Sepkus, who describes himself as self-taught, holds a graduate degree in industrial design from the Lithuanian Academy of Arts, where he studied glassmaking, sculpture, etching, and graphic design before discovering that goldsmithing was his life‘s passion.

The 49-year-old jeweler‘s firm grasp of precision and balance is evidenced in the intricacy of his pieces. Sepkus draws inspiration mainly from literature. "Not directly," he says, "but the euphoria I feel when reading something really good, like P.G. Wodehouse, whose writing is close to music. It‘s this feeling of pure fun and joy that I try to express in my work."