Designing Elegance with a natural material

Creating High Quality Earrings from wood.

Pickers Ridge was started in 2017 with a few simple timber products that we designed and handcrafted in-house here in Far North Queensland, Australia. Wooden earrings were one of these first line products that were well received, and even to this day, late in 2023, we still have customers who purchased wooden earrings from us back then, returning to add to their collection or to simply replace a pair where one earring was lost.

Over these years, we have perfected our designs and processes to the point where we are able to consider supplying other outlets that don’t have the ability or skill set to handcraft these earrings. The following article explains a little about our mindset and plans for the future for these earrings.

Discovering niches in the wood earring market.

As anyone who makes things to sell will tell you, the internet is a great place for research. With a few clicks, and a cup of coffee, you can get ideas and general pricing for just about anything. It can also show where opportunities are, if you are looking. This is the case with our range of wooden earrings that we have available. Before we made our first pair of earrings, we spent several hours looking at designs that were for sale elsewhere, and we discovered that many (almost all really) designs were simple lazer cut slices of ply or similar woods, and they had a kind of bland generic feel and look to them.

In our case, we had access to many different species of wood, along with a good range of color tones. We also had many years of experience with fine furniture timbers and how to handle them to bring out the best shine and finish. We decided that if we applied these same skills that we used for fine furniture making to wooden earrings, surely the discerning customers would appreciate the style and quality we hoped to offer them. Our customers comments tell us we have taken the correct path.

Designing elegance into wood earrings.

As we noted above, most wooden earring styles are lazer cut flat designs that fill a certain market niche. There is another kind of style that uses larger chunks of wood and while these do offer a better range of timber tones, we feel they seem to be targeting the girls who are more of a bare feet and hemp dress type.

The designs mentioned above are the vast majority of the available ranges, and we found nothing that resembled what we had in mind. As we are wood workers, we have access to machines that can transform a simple piece of timber into the kind of wood earrings you will find here at Pickers Ridge. These earrings have several things in common. They are all thin, highly polished, they are very light, and they all show the natural grain, texture, and color of the type of wood that is used.

Having sold over a thousand of these designs over the last few years, the feedback has confirmed that elegance in the design is possibly the most important factor that brings people back again and again.

Using natural tones and grain in wood earrings.

This is something we enjoy working on because each separate slice of wood has its own patterns and color tones that help us design the earring shape and style. Some woods are full of spectacular figure and make the earring “pop”. This can allow the earring to be more of a simple shape that doesn’t need to carry the design, as the wood does all the work for us.

Other woods need a little help as they can have a lovely tone, but little figure or grain pattern. This wood lends itself to the ‘doubles’ and ‘triples’ you will find here on site. This range is quite popular and is a very safe option for husbands and partners to purchase as a gift. This style can be dressed up or down, and the different colors allow for matching with a useful range of clothes.

Showcasing the natural beauty of timber through wooden earrings.

Some woods have gorgeous patterns, and we actually look for this kind of wood to use in our earrings. One of these woods you will find on our website is Brown Walnut. It is a quite rare wood and is only found is a few locations here in Far North Queensland. We are fortunate enough to have a small slab that was donated to us a few years ago, and the wood is now dedicated to earrings. The colors are very pretty, and the grain often has a lovely flash when moved in the light. Other woods like our local oaks can give wonderful patterns if cut the right way.

Wood earrings that are gentle on the environment.

We work with wood every day, and we know firsthand how difficult it is to source wood. We also know that people can cut trees down faster than they can grow. It is through this observation that we have made a conscious choice to ‘shrink’ our business. We now make small things.

You will notice that very little wood goes into making a pair of earrings. This is the best outcome from what we do here at Pickers Ridge.

In times gone by when wood was in plentiful supply, we could handcraft tables, chairs, sideboards, and large wood turnings. It was easy to replace the used wood with another slab or two. Things have changed, and so has our understanding of the reality of the wood industry. We have seen the dwindling availability of wood as a wakeup call to be responsible and careful with the wood we do have in stock.

Shrinking our product size allows us to not look at purchasing wood again, except in rare occasions. It has allowed us to specialize and explore a niche market with almost no environmental footprint, and that is a great feeling. It has also taught us a new appreciation for the wonderful material we have the blessing of working with daily.

You are most welcome to browse the range we make and list here, and we would be excited and proud to include you as one of our sophisticated customers. If our range is not your style, thanks for dropping in all the same.