The Story Behind The Margarita Necklace
The Necklace That Almost Wasn't
In 2022, I was burnt out. Not the dramatic kind, just the quiet, creeping kind that comes from years of building something with your own two hands. And then, one evening on the Azuero Peninsula in Panama, somewhere along that stretch of coast, where the sun drops straight into the Pacific over Playa Venao, the sky did something it does better there than almost anywhere else in the world. Purple bled into orange, orange into black, black into a blue green I still can't fully describe. It only lasted a few minutes. But something about that sky rearranged something in me.
Sunset in the Azuero Coast. Playa Venao. Right in front of the famous swing at El Sitio. 2022.
The sunset at Casita Marylin in Playa Venao. 2022
The next week I went back to my studio and started tinkering. Not with a plan, just with color. Purple, orange, black, white, blue, green. On paper it sounds like chaos, like every color arguing for space. But together, in the exact order I was arranging them in, they didn't argue. They agreed. That was the birth of the Owshi collection.
Chaos in my studio. Things being made!
The Margarita necklace was the last piece I made for this collection, and I made it almost by accident. It was strung together from the beads that were left over after designing everything else. The scraps. The remainders. I looked at it, thought "nice piece," and put it in a tray. That was it. No fanfare. No grand vision. Just leftovers.
It sat there until my sister Andrea walked into my studio one day and saw it. "I love this one, can I have it?" she said. I didn't believe she wanted it. To me, it was made of the pieces nobody wanted. I almost left it out of the shoot entirely. It was only while I was packing up samples, rushing to meet with my trusty photographer Yassell, that I caught it out of the corner of my eye and grabbed it last minute. That photo became the most beautiful image from the entire shoot.
Yassell, Ruben and Eleonora my favorite team to shoot with. 2022
Pieces to be shot for the 2022 Owshi Collection
One of my favorite images of all times. The first photo of The first version of the Margarita Necklace
Since then, the Margarita has never left the collection. But it hasn't stayed the same either. Over the years I removed the small spacer beads between the ceramic pieces and replaced them with knots, the way you'd string pearls. It's a small change, but it means everything if a strand ever breaks. Instead of beads scattering across the floor, they stay knotted in place, safe, secure. It came from years of making this piece over and over, learning what a piece needs to actually live on someone's neck, not just look good in a photo.
My sister Andrea wearing her first Margarita necklace, she then upgraded to the newer version :)
Even the purple changed. The original glaze company that made that specific muted shade closed down, and for a ceramist, finding the right purple is no small thing. I searched, tested, failed, tested again, until I found a shade more vibrant than the original, one that somehow worked even better. Around the same time, I got a new kiln and finally learned to fire beads with the kind of precision I'd been chasing for years.
The second version of the Mrgarita Necklace. Different purple and with knots in between.
So the Margarita you wear today isn't the necklace from that first tray. It's better. It's the version shaped by loss, by scarcity, by practice, by someone else's eyes seeing what I almost missed.
That's the thing about beautiful things. Sometimes they're sitting right in front of you, waiting for someone to notice. Sometimes it takes your sister walking in at the right moment. Sometimes it takes years of knots and glazes and kilns to get it right.
The Margarita necklace has been our bestseller for years now. Every strand still holds that sunset over the Azuero coast. Every knot still holds a lesson: great things take time, and sometimes the most beautiful piece you'll ever make is the one you almost didn't notice.
