Although husband and wife team David and Sybil Yurman officially launched the David Yurman Company in 1980, their collaboration began decades before and has been, in their words, “one long art project.” David Yurman is a brand built on a passion, collaboration, and curiosity that bound its creators together long before they even knew the other existed. Over fifty years after their first serendipitous meeting, David and Sybil Yurman have built an ever-evolving brand that consistently meets the desire at the heart of what they do: to make beautiful things that people want to wear. 

Born in New York City in 1942, a couple months and a few miles apart, they both discovered their love for art at an early age. As a child, David knew he wanted to be an artist when he discovered images of paleolithic animals, simple lines that conveyed drama and movement, which you still see in Yurman’s work today. Sybil’s passion for art showed up in her love for Monet and other French impressionists. Described as an emotional painter, she was inspired by art that reflects the artist’s emotional relationship with their surroundings. Both Sybil and David would leave the traditional classroom setting to pursue different artistic avenues they deemed their true calling. David is the artist he is today thanks in part to his time under the tutelage of sculptor Ernesto Gonzalez, where he learned the technique of direct welding; honed his skills as leather-worker and sandal-maker under Roger Rilleau, and mastered the importance of artistic discipline and use of materials from modernist sculptor Jaques Lipchitz. Both David and Sybil spent a good portion of their young adult lives immersing themselves in the Beat Generation, with Sybil eventually moving to Greenwich Village to live among the Beat Poets. 

It was in 1969, when David worked for sculptor Hans Van de Bovenkamp in New York City and Sybil applied for a job as studio manager that their paths crossed and a lifelong collaboration was born.  For the next decade they would be key figures in the American Craft Movement. In 1973, they moved to Putnam Valley in upstate New York and formed their first design studio, Putnam Art Works. Designed from their shared creative vision, David describes this early work as “sculpture to wear.” Six years later, David and Sybil married and one year after that, they established the David Yurman Company. 

With Sybil acting as co-creator and collaborator, David’s designs focused on innovative collections of beaded jewelry using pearls, lapis, garnets, jade and other semi-precious stones, mixing shape, texture and color. His material of choice, however, was bronze wire. Using a torch and the direct welding technique he learned, he fashioned and twisted the wire into three dimensional shapes. Inspired by allegorical figures and organic forms, these twisted helixes became the trademark Cable bracelet, the “river that runs through” all the designs at DY.  

Since the 80’s, DY has changed the way jewelry is designed, marketed, purchased and worn with numerous collections, including the Starlight, strands of gold dotted with diamonds; Silver Ice, diamonds set in sterling silver; and Starbust, inspired by a fireworks display witnessed over the Eiffel Tower. Perhaps the greatest collaboration of Sybil and David’s was their son, Evan, born in 1982. Twenty years later, having shown an aptitude for jewelry design from a young age, he now assists his parents as the Design Director for Men’s Jewelry. 

In 2020, David Yurman celebrated fifty years of innovative jewelry designs, trailblazing ad campaigns and groundbreaking contributions to the jewelry industry. 

Explore our assortment of David Yurman pieces at Schwarzschild today! Visit us in Charlottesville, Carytown, and Midlothian.