hand made wearable art
Bspoken Designs
“When I met him, I was at a point in my life where I was just trying to switch things up,” Thomas said of her initial meeting with Rich.
“I had done Hearts for Carter and Wild Hearts a certain way and I thought, ‘let’s do something different, so that’s when I started making petals using canes. Of course mine were much simpler; one solid color with maybe a couple of colors wrapped around it.
So I had already started that style but when he asked me to use his cane, I thought that was kind of interesting.
That was the end of 2012, two years after ‘Hearts for Carter’ began. That was the beginning of the partnership between Rich and Thomas which has led to them showing and selling jewelry in Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
Their pieces are being worn by people all over the world, including Kentucky’s own Ashley Judd who received her own piece while cheering on her beloved Kentucky Wildcats during the 2015 NCAA tournament.
And Rich’s wife, Jamie still had her hand in the process, searching for a name for the business that would adequately reflect what they did. “My wife was looking on line to see what kind of name described what we do and saw ‘Bespoken’, which means handcrafted and handmade,” Rich said. “That’s how we came up with that.”
It hasn’t even been three years since their partnership began but the speed at which their success has come was no surprise to Rich. “I mean, I knew when she made that pendant, we had something,” Rich said. “So I said let’s get into the Guild. So we got into the Guild. From there, that first show, we really knew we had something then. We went straight from the Guild into Kentucky Crafted and just have been kind of going up ever since.”
With Thomas and Rich both working full-time jobs, balancing their time and cross-training comes in handy. Let’s see what it looks like. Like he said, everyone at school went crazy over it so we thought, maybe we have something here.”
Thomas says her Theater Management degree from Berea College has actually lent itself well to everything she has done. Before moving into teaching, Thomas was the first Director of Tourism in Berea, Kentucky.
“Tourism involves marketing and promotions, just like this (jewelry business) does,” she said. “I saw a lot of those people (in Berea) get started and I see them still in business now and how they have done it and how they have stayed and those that have gone. For me, it has been a full circle thing. I never planned on being here. It prepared me well.”
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