A Mother's Inspiration
SUELLEN E. DEAN, Staff Writer
Published May 9, 2004

Emily Ray, the designer behind Emily Ray Jewelry Inc. in Spartanburg, has created plenty of one-of-a-kind jewelry since opening her company in her father's farmhouse near Woodruff 10 years ago. But no piece compares to the bracelet she recently designed to honor her mother, Martha Hardegree, who died from breast cancer seven years ago.

The pink Swarovski crystal and pearl bracelet comes with a unique antique toggle clasp with the inscription "In Memory of Martha." And $5 from every bracelet goes to the American Cancer Society.

It was Martha who inspired Emily, the baby of the five grown Hardegree children, to become a jewelry designer.

Martha, who for many years sold her own landscape and portrait paintings, brought back handmade earrings from a trip she and her husband, Winston, had taken to Hilton Head in 1988.

"Emily, you can make these," she told her daughter, who was married with three small children at the time.
Martha took Emily to an art store and bought her all the materials she needed to make jewelry.

"I would make jewelry at night, and she would baby-sit for me during the day so I could go out and sell," Emily said, standing in her spacious office with her desk and long art table covered in dozens of containers of beads. She now works to design the jewelry, which is copied by women in the assembly area. Each worker matches an image of the jewelry shown on computer screens so they can repeat Emily Ray's personal design.

"My mother was the inspiration, the one who helped me find my gift, my talent," Emily said. "So I wanted to make something to both honor her and do something for breast cancer research."

Winston and Martha Hardegree moved to Spartanburg in 1990 to help their oldest son, Mike, a group president at Tietex International, with his two children. Mike had just lost his wife to lung cancer. She was only 35.

Winston, who worked his way up from a cloth doffer to become the head of Avondale Yarn Mills in Sylacauga, Ala., had retired when he and Martha moved to Spartanburg.

REALIZING A DREAM
They had lived here four years when they got a call one night from Emily, who was living in Columbus, Miss. She was seeking support from her father to go full-time into her own jewelry-making business.

"Everyone tells us we are crazy," Emily told her father. Her husband at the time, Chris, planned to quit his lucrative job as a sales manager for a big food company to help Emily with the business.

Winston said: "I told them, 'You've got a dream and an itch. You've got to scratch that itch to realize the dream.' "

Winston and Martha were living in town, but Winston spent many hours at his Blessed Earth Farm near Woodruff. He agreed to let his daughter live and work on the farm for free in order to build her business. He helped finance the venture until the banks saw the success and took over.

Emily Ray was almost immediately successful and in less than two years had moved to a storefront in Woodruff. The business outgrew that space and moved to downtown Spartanburg to a 6,000-square-foot building on Morgan Square. Three years ago, Emily Ray moved to its current 14,000-square-foot building at 121 Venture Blvd. on Spartanburg's west side.

Today, Emily Ray employs 47 people, including seven sales representatives, and the jewelry is sold across the Southeast and Southwest to more than 1,200 boutiques. The past couple of years, the jewelry has been going farther, to places such as Hawaii, Japan and Canada.

The building not only houses a place where at least two dozen workers assemble Emily's designs, but also a showroom and an outlet, which is open two days a month.

In some ways, Emily Ray has followed her late mother's lead. Martha had no formal training when she picked up a paint-by-number set while living in New York City and taking care of four young children.

"She always wanted to be a housewife and never worked out of the home, other than her painting," Winston said.

She decided she liked painting and went to Queen's College in New York and the Art Institute at night.

In the 1960s and '70s, Martha's landscape paintings often brought upwards of $1,500. By the time the Hardegrees had moved to Spartanburg, however, Martha had given up her painting for missionary work, taking four or five trips to different parts of the world with her church, Evangel Cathedral.

"She really got into the evangelical movement and went all over the world. She even smuggled Bibles into China in the early 1990s," Winston said.

She passed away at age 67 on April 4, 1997. It was Winston's 65th birthday.

He's now 72 and remarried. He and wife Beth are avid gardeners and have moved to the farm, where Winston has fought cancer, too.
Since his daughter's divorce, Winston has come out of retirement to help her with the business side. He even has his own office at Emily Ray's.

A MOTHER'S TOUCH
On a recent visit to his office, he talked about how proud he is of his daughter and what it means to him that she has designed a piece of jewelry in honor of his high school sweetheart and wife of 46 years.

"I'm just so proud that I can't put it into words. My biggest regret is that her mother is not here to see it," he said.

Emily had been thinking about the bracelet for several years, and she went through several prototypes before deciding on what is now the "In Memory of Martha" line. The first is a pink pearl and led crystal bracelet.

She describes the pieces as "your mother's pearls with a little twist to it."

"Pink is the signature color for the breast cancer foundation, and it was one of my mother's favorite colors. She loved pastels. But it had to be the right pink," Emily said, describing how picky she was and all the months spent searching for the right colors, the right pearls, and even the right clasps.

"When the Swarovski pink pearl came out last year, it hit me, these are perfect. My mother loved pearls, too." These faux pearls are actually lead crystal made with a special finish, which allows Emily Ray to extend its lifetime guarantee, she said.

The clasp is extra special and took months and several different molds by her caster in Albuquerque, N.M., to get it exactly like Emily Ray wanted.

"I was picky, picky. I wanted to put a little antique feel with the toggle. I wanted it to be there forever with the toggle ring inscription. I want it to go on forever," she said.

Each bracelet, which sells for $78, also comes with a special tag, tied with a pink ribbon, that carries a snapshot of Emily Ray with her mother.
In the photograph, taken by her father during a family moment at home in Chattanooga, Tenn., Emily is two and has a big open smile on her face. So does Martha.

Emily Ray went through the family photo albums until she found the photograph that represented the joy she and her mother shared.
"I came across this one, and this one shows the love she had for me, the joy we gave each other," she said.

"You can't tell because the rest of the photo is cut off, but all I'm wearing is a diaper. I must have just had a bath," Emily Ray said.

Since February, when the first shipment of bracelets were delivered, more than 600 bracelets have been sold, raising more than $3,000 for the National Breast Cancer Foundation.

The bracelets have been so popular that Emily Ray has added a matching strand of pearls (17-inch for $166, which includes the special toggle) and earrings. Donations to the foundation go along with the necklace, too.

She's had heartwarming response from customers who have attended her trunk shows, including one in Atlanta and one in Dallas.

"Every woman who has picked up the bracelet, from 16 on up, has read the card. Not only have I seen it bring tears to their eyes, but so many people have talked about their loved ones who have passed away. Mothers. Sisters. Friends. I want to keep this in my line for as long as it will sell and as long as we can continue to raise money."

And more importantly, she said the bracelet is something that she wants to wear.

"I wanted to create something that I could look at and it would remind me of mom and her personality. She was so delicate, so feminine, such a lady," Emily said, describing the emotion that went into her mother's bracelet. "I wanted something that reminded me of her, that way I could get that across to everyone else how special she was."