Anna Lorich Akers founded Lorak Designs Fine Jewelry in 2009, after finishing graduate school and receiving her MFA degree from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2006. Anna’s fine art jewelry has been featured in numerous galleries, publications, and museums. In addition to her narrative, and material exploratory fine art works, she wished to create a line of contemporary fine jewelry that explores the artful interpretation of traditional jewelry mediums of silver and gold, with mixed gemstones.

Anna attributes her collection's aesthetic to a variety of inspirations, ranging from her love of artifacts, especially those of the ancient Greek and Egyptian civilizations, to her adoration of Scandinavian design. Her conceptual mantra manifests timeless objects of elegance in the simplicity of shape and design with a propensity for the natural world as well as traditional handmade craftsmanship. It is therefore hardly surprising that the modus operandi behind each of her pieces is simplicity itself . . . pieces she herself wishes to wear.

In her words:

Finely made things seem to last, tell stories and open our eyes. They can offer hints about the past and enliven the present. In my childhood, I had the opportunity to hold artifacts from Greece, Rome and Egypt. My hands remember their weight and texture, and how time had softened their edges. Their decorative motifs haunt me like something alive that wants to unfold again into the present. I don’t want to “solve” the mysteries. Rather, I try to reach out to them like someone who would join a dance. My work is an ongoing search for a practice of jewelry craft that allows tangible elements to become transparent vessels through which visions are revealed.

I studied at both the Cleveland Institute of Art and the Rhode Island School of Design, and I experiment again and again with drawing, painting, textiles and the sculptural form. My Scandinavian genes incline me toward utilitarian simplicity, but I’m also drawn constantly to the swirling lushness of the natural world, and to the extravagances of European cities and their eccentric young cousins along the eastern coast of the United States.