How My Jewelry Found Its Way to SFMOMA

There have been plenty of milestones throughout the CMD journey that have made my heart swell, but seeing my jewelry inside the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will always rank pretty high on that list. SFMOMA is one of those places I've loved for years, long before Colleen Mauer Designs became what it is today. Somehow, without realizing it at the time, the museum also became part of the CMD story before CMD officially existed.

Before There Was Colleen Mauer Designs

Long before I was running a jewelry business, I was a hostess at Greens Restaurant in San Francisco. I was making jewelry then, but I wasn't selling it. Mostly, I was making pieces because I loved making them and then wearing my experiments to work each night at the hostess stand.

One evening, a woman approached me and asked where she could buy the necklace I was wearing. Amidst my blushing, I told her I'd made it myself. She immediately asked if I could make one for her. Little did I know, she worked for SFMOMA.

When SFMOMA Became Part of the CMD Story

That first necklace led to something I never could have planned. She and some of her colleagues became regular customers of my very up-and-coming jewelry collection, while I continued making pieces and slowly figuring out what this whole jewelry thing might become.

At the same time, I was spending plenty of my own hours at SFMOMA. I've always been a fiend for all things design, and I could lose an unreasonable amount of time in the Museum Store admiring the modern, eclectic jewelry and objects they carried. The idea that my own work might someday be there wasn't something I could have predicted back at that hostess stand.

Twelve Years Later, Everything Came Full Circle

About twelve years after that first encounter at Greens, SFMOMA's buyers approached me at NY NOW in New York. This time, CMD was no longer an experiment I was wearing to my restaurant job. I had spent years developing my design language, building a collection and turning jewelry making into the career I hadn't originally known I was going to have. And there I was, talking with the buyers from a museum I'd admired for years about carrying Colleen Mauer Designs.

Getting to see CMD jewelry eventually displayed in SFMOMA's Museum Store and its SFO International Terminal location was surreal. There was something particularly satisfying about knowing that the jewelry I'd once worn behind a hostess stand had made its way into a museum store I'd spent so many hours wandering through myself.

Sometimes the Beginning Doesn't Look Like a Beginning

Looking back, I love this story because there was no grand plan behind any of it. I wasn't wearing that necklace to Greens hoping someone important would notice it. I was making jewelry because I couldn't seem to stop making jewelry, and I was wearing it because I loved what I was creating.

So many of the most important parts of CMD started that way. One person noticed. Someone asked a question. A client told a friend. I kept making things, refining them and following whatever felt interesting enough to pursue next. Eventually, all of those little pieces started looking a lot like a jewelry business.

SFMOMA will always have a special place in the CMD story because, in a funny way, it was there near the beginning and then showed up again years later when I was finally ready for it.

Still amazed by where jewelry can take you,
Colleen

© Colleen Mauer Designs. All rights reserved.

Published: March 31, 2015
Updated: August 23, 2026