Bathed in Rainbow Light: The Story of Talisman Fine Jewelry

“I certainly didn’t envision myself hand-making gold rings back when I was studying economics,” explains Vanessa Barcus, founder of Talisman Fine Jewelry. She describes the path that led her to creating this line as “roundabout” and “circuitous,” starting when she first started selling her own jewelry while running a boutique in Denver called Goldyn. “It was a very simple thing back then,” she explains, “just basics that I knew sold well. I also was not the one metalsmithing it at the time—I had a staff person and later a friend do that part for me.”

After tiring of the grind of owning a boutique, Barcus closed the store and moved to Portland, but continued to wholesale her products to other stores around the country. But it soon became clear that she needed to learn the metalsmithing herself. “Sometimes it’s just too hard to translate your creative vision to someone else,” she says about the process. “So, in Portland, I took metalsmithing courses, learned how to do casting, and slowly took over producing the whole line myself, by hand.” 

Creating her pieces in a “very analog, old-school way, and that is entirely intentional,” Barcus’ 14k recycled gold pieces are not just designed to last a lifetime, but, with Barcus identifying as queer herself, the pieces are also made to go beyond the gender binary and become genderless jewelry. “As soon as I started making Talisman, I knew I wanted it to feel fluid—a bit androgynous, for everyone,” she recalls. “Despite the fact that there are indeed some pieces with sapphic undertones (hello gold vaginal portal pendant), ‘seasonless, genderless, and timeless’ was always the motto.” Reacting against mainstream jewelry designs that she calls, “so gendered, so templatized, so traditional,” Barcus set out specifically to make this jewelry for queer people. “Queer people inherently think outside of societal norms and boxes, and I wanted to create something with that in mind.”

Featured in this issue is Talisman Fine Jewelry’s “We Create Our Own Utopia” campaign, a photo shoot featuring queer people modeling the jewelry bathed in rainbow light. “I grew up in a very new-agey household in Boulder,” Barcus recalls. “My dad was a big fan of rainbow prisms, and we had several of them hanging in the windows in our home. All gay emblems aside, they’re just nostalgic for me, especially since he passed away. So, needless to say, I have a ton of prisms hanging around my house. I’ve become obsessed with bathing in their rainbow light and meditating with them. So, when I saw some friends post online about visiting a place called the Dwan Light Sanctuary, my jaw dropped: floor to ceiling, life-scale prisms, casting enormous rainbows across a round white room.”

The Dwan Light Sanctuary is an installation by Charles Ross, who shares Barcus’ fascination with light and rainbows, and so Barcus roadtripped down to New Mexico with the two models, Apple and Royal, photographer Matt Nager, and two assistants, Madeline and David, to shoot this beautiful campaign. “The pieces speak a lot to concepts like interconnection, interdependence, and yes, queer joy as resistance,” she says. “The concept for the collection’s campaign photoshoot just really coalesced from there.”

With queerness woven into the design of her jewelry, Barcus wants the queer community to know about her brand and the fact that there’s a queer person behind it. “I don’t think there’s a whole lot of queer representation in this industry, especially in fine jewelry, and so I think it’s important to show that for visibility both within and outside of the community,” Barcus shares. “We’re in such a weird, scary place as a country right now, and I think that if someone has the ability (and safety) to be as loud and proud as possible, they should do so.” She later adds that, “I came out while creating Talisman, and that story is inherently interwoven into my designs. The brand is really very personal and reflects a lot of my own story and experiences, when you read between the lines.”

As for what Barcus wants the queer community to know about her brand, she says, “This collection is more than just pretty pieces. I mean, that’s great—I want them to stand on their own aesthetically too. But there is a deep spirituality to what I do as well.  I work with energy, and every piece I hand-make is imbued with a specific intention or energetic charge; they’re really ‘talismans’ in the truest sense of the word.” And finally, she adds, “Lastly, to the queer community, I just want you to know that you are seen, held and safe in this space.”

Talisman Fine Jewelry can be found at TalismanFineJewelry.co and also at retailers around the country including Recital Boutique in Denver and MAX locations throughout Colorado.