The Sass Brown Designs Story
Welcome to Sass Brown Designs, home of personalized letter tile jewelry and other wearable art created from vintage game pieces, recycled trinkets, and repurposed materials!
Who says jewelry has to be serious? Show off your playful side with our colorful and unique handcrafted pieces. Wear them for luck at your next game night, SCRABBLE® tournament, trip to Vegas, or bingo hall, and watch the chips roll in!*
Susan "Sass" Brown grew up in Alexandria, Virginia, where she loved to climb down through a bamboo grove to the Potomac riverbank and look for bits of pottery and shells. Her jewelry-making began with these gatherings—choosing beautiful fragments, broken things which one day would be part of a necklace or bracelet: making something new and whole and beautiful out of what was scattered.
She discovered beads in high school, selling handmade earrings at Grateful Dead concerts during the summer. Later she brought her work to college, to her job, to yard sales—anywhere she thought people would appreciate the sparkle of crystal, the sheen of glass.
One afternoon Brown was poking around a nearby thrift store and came across some old games she remembered from childhood: SCRABBLE®, dominos, checkers ... And suddenly she was awash in rules and strategy; the grids of game boards; nights around the dining room table shuffling fake money. The pieces were cold and familiar in her hands. And so she bought a hand drill, combined the pieces with beads and findings, and went to work.
Brown officially entered the business world several years ago after founding her home-based business, Sass Brown Designs, in Alexandria, Virginia. Specializing in jewelry made from vintage game pieces, recycled trinkets, and repurposed materials, Brown has attracted interest from all over the world. Uniting the seemingly-divergent strains of her designs is an interest in chance and symbolism, memory, and pop culture.
*Winning hand not guaranteed!
This site is not sponsored by or affiliated with Hasbro, Inc.
