Margaret Sullivan is the 8th of 10 children from Gladwin, Michigan, but these days she lives with husband Preston, and a host of other animal family members on N-Bar Ranch in Reserve. New Mexico. The place is headquarters of two creative souls in Margaret and Preston. N-Bar Ranch is a beautiful place operated with love and in a way that honors the history of the setting and the cowboy.
She makes jewelry in her solar powered studio just about every day, in between ranch chores and spending time with Preston, the furry family or ranch guests.
We met Margaret back in the late 1990’s when she and brother, Bob had a shop in Dallas, Texas called Puti. They sold folk art, cool stuff, and some of the beginnings of Margaret’s jewelry making.
She has dedicated her life to making stuff. Her jewelry has blossomed, bloomed and hit the highest level of skill, imagination, her beautiful wit.
She most recently has taken a couple of Navaho jewelry workshops to hone her stamping and silver skills.
Margaret is a great friend and we share a love for music. Her humor is quick, dry and unmatched, thus we look forward to anytime we can share laughter.
She’ll be with us in Fort Davis this coming Memorial Day weekend for a trunk show with Margaret to celebrate her birthday!
For the fun of it we recently sent Margaret some questions…….
What is your current studio music?
As far as music that I listen to recently, it’s been Billy Strings, Tyler Childers, and Bob Dylan in a mix that contains Bob Seger ‘s Night Moves, since I’m from Michigan. I’m always listening to a lot of Americana like Grateful Dead, Rolling Stones, and Zeppelin. You know the good ones.
How many pets are your studio assistants? Do they critique your work?Pets that I have in the studio are slim the wiener dog that I carry up and down the stairs whenever he needs to go up and down, and I have Bill and Curly my two orange cats that are always watching my every move.
And yeah, curly likes to critique my stuff by picking it up off the trays and throwing it onto the floor sometimes into the trash, whatever he feels works for him.
I also have my two other dogs Jack and Bella. They come upstairs whenever Preston ‘s not doing anything fun but mostly it’s just slim and the two cats.
What is the best part of your day at N-Bar Ranch?
I guess the best what I love best about the Nbar Ranch is just when I just look around. There’s just incredible beauty everywhere. My favorite time of the day is feeding my horses and taking my dog for walks and petting my barn cats. I have some friends out there.
What inspires you the most?
I guess what inspires me most is I love horses and animals and cowboy stuff .
I like it to make jewelry that people want to wear all the time, every day or when they dress up,
I like my pieces to work for it all.
When and how did you get the jeweler calling?
In 1992 I was working at Half Price Books and learned about religious reliquaries where they stored part of saints and decorated the boxes with gold and jewels. That inspired me to make my first pieces.
I first started forming jewelry out of sculpey clay until I could take silver jewelry classes.
