Style: June 16, 2020

14 STYLE | feature
Self-taught, Debra prides herself on pushing her craft beyond its limits. Photo Acorn photography
“It’s just not going to happen with Covid-19,” she
reluctantly concedes.
But with whiplash-like quickness, she is cheerful once
again. You get the sense there is not much that can keep
the Port Chalmers jeweller down, not even the February
22, 2011 earthquake, which tried its best to decimate
her business.
She was in her Lichfield Street gallery, by Poplar Lane,
when she got a phone call from a neighbour that her
two mastiff-cross dogs were barking up a storm in the
neighbourhood. And now noise control was sitting outside
her home.
“So I went home, put the dogs on the couch and put the
TV on and told them [the dogs] I had to go back to work,”
she says. “Then the bloody earthquake hit. I was really
lucky, the dogs must’ve known.”
The back of her building had fallen off and, like many
businesses, it was about six months before she was given
10 minutes in her studio to fill a wheelie bin and get out.
Debra never returned to the building after that.
It was the middle of wedding ring season and Debra
had to get back to work. Her husband and builder, Dean
Brewster, divided their bedroom, creating a workroom for
Debra to continue her craft while the city slowly put itself
back together.
A couple of years later, Debra and Dean moved to
Port Chalmers, charmed by its eclectic artistic vibe. She
now manufactures from her Dunedin home and Dean
has joined her in the workroom after hanging up his tools.
Their constant companion is rescue dog Maia.
“I’d say you are a wee bit needy, aren’t you,” Debra
murmurs to Maia, as she pats her, reassuring the pooch
that they will go for a walk soon.
“All she wants is cuddles, hugs and love. Even if I have a
fire going on in the other room, she still has to be in the
studio,” she says.
Debra became a jeweller quite by accident. She has
always been a bit of magpie, she says, the child in the ballet
class who had to have the dress with the most sparkles. At
12, she was at flea markets with her polymer clay jewellery,
making enough to visit her aunt in Australia. At 19, as
many people did in the 1980s, she packed her bags and
left Dunedin for Australia, where she worked in publishing.
When the industry started appreciating a more digital
presence, she had to upskill, which is how, surprisingly, she
stumbled upon crafting jewellery.
“I was supposed to do a computer course that had been
cancelled in Sydney and they said, ‘Do you want to do this
jewellery course or do you want your money back?’ ”
She opted for the course. Though if you say the
word “training” to Debra, she’ll have a chuckle and a bit
of a snort. For this self-taught jeweller, there was no
“classical training”.
“I have no manufacturing experience and I have no art
school background either. It was just a hobby and it wasn’t
until I moved back to New Zealand pregnant, 31 years
old and living with my parents that I took it up seriously,”
she says.
The tagline on her website is: ‘Extraordinary jewellery for
uncommon people.’
“I did wonder if that sounded a bit pretentious,” says
Debra in that way she has of thinking out loud.
“But it means that it is OK not to be completely
normal. I’ve learned over the years, that you can’t please
everybody. The world would be a boring place if people
liked the same things, so that is kind of what my jewellery
is about.”
She has developed her own techniques, always
challenging the “right way” of doing things.
“I would ask, ‘Why can’t we do it this way?’ Often the
answer was because ‘that’s not the way it is done’. To
me, that is not an answer, that’s just a brush-off. Well, why
isn’t it done that way? What happens if it is done this way?”
Debra is not afraid of failing with her experiments either,
because they have led to her “quite different techniques”
and bespoke pieces.
Rattling sounds ramp up in the background. It is time
for Debra to head off to her gallery in George Street. It is
already shaping up to be a busy day for the jeweller, but
she wouldn’t have it any other way.