"I love your name Enyonam. What does it mean? and why did you decide to use ‘Enyo’ for your company?"

Enyonam (or short Enyo) is my third name which was given to me at birth. My mother asked her wonderful friend for a name recommendation for her last child. It was Auntie Jane who then recommended Enyonam, which is a Ghanaian name and means “It is good for me”.

When building my jewelry shop based on West and East African design inspirations I thought using my own name would be most powerful – this is me, and these are my creations, carrying my own name! The short version – Enyo – is how many people refer to me that call me by that name. It is short, poignant, memorable, easy to pronounce, and beautiful!

"How long have you been designing and creating jewelry? When did you start?"

I have been inspired by African jewelry for a very long time. The women in my family have always had a great sense of fashion and jewelry, and it was my mother who always brought back gorgeous jewelry when coming back from West Africa. She wears chunky beads and pendants, and at some point in my teenage years I could not bear but ask her for some of her jewelry to wear myself.

Then, when living in Nairobi, I finally started my own bead collection. One of my Kenyan colleagues who I was working with always wore wonderful jewelry and told me that she actually made it herself! She was the one who brought me to local, hidden away shops and traders, so I started buying some beads there. In the meanwhile, I moved from Nairobi over London to Washington, which gave me little time to actually work on crafting and creating jewelry. In summer 2013, I finally had the inspiration to pick up jewelry making. I had no background in crafting whatsoever – I just started learning by doing. The only thing I knew was what kind of jewelry I really liked and wanted to create!

"Tell us about your design style and aesthetic. What makes ‘Enyo’ jewelry unique?"

As I mentioned earlier, my designs are heavily inspired by West and East African jewelry that I have come across. I absolutely love large beads, many colors, large pendants, as well as chunky pieces of art, but I also like abstract pieces, randomness and merging different styles together. Many of my multistrand necklaces, for example, mix lots of different colors and beads. I like to create unity through some sense of randomness. It is then the large beads or pendants that hold the different pieces together.

"You use a lot of rare stones and materials for your pieces. Where do find your beads and embellishments?"

I have collected some of them personally on my travels. I have had people bring me beads! And I have started ordering online – from African traders and entrepreneurs. Last week, for example, a package from Senegal, and another one from Ethiopia reached me! Who doesn’t like to receive packages from so far away?

In the future, I would like to have stable sources of local traders and shops in the places that I source beads from. Ideally, I would like to travel to places I am interested in purchasing beads from, and get to know people personally whom I will then be in touch with in the long-run. However, I am still at the beginning stages of building a sustainable and ethical product, value and supply chain that feeds Enyo Jewelry.


Excerpts from an interview... (http://akatasia.com/articles/questions-with-enyo-jewelry-founder-and-designer-isabel-wetzel/)