I was born in a small cabin on Partington Ridge, high above the Big Sur coast. My father, Karl Lee, moved there from the Esalen Art Barn, where the studio began in 1964. It was home and studio for our family for years. I grew up in it. Karl's bench stood in that cabin. In time, mine stood next to his.
The cabin was one of the first built on the ridge. Keith Evans built it. Evans had been mayor of Carmel. In 1944 Henry Miller came to Big Sur and stayed first with Lynda Sargent, in the log cabin Nepenthe was later built around. After two months she introduced him to Evans, who let him use the Partington Ridge cabin for a small rent while Evans was away in military service. Miller lived there until January 1946, when Evans came home from the war and wanted the house again. It is the same cabin. It still stands.
Miller loved the place. In February 1945 he wrote to his friend Lawrence Durrell: "I have a wonderful cabin, dirt cheap, ten dollars a month." The road up was steep. There was no electricity. The mail came three times a week. Years later, in Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, he wrote: "In simplifying our lives, everything acquires a significance hitherto unknown."
Jobst C. Knigge tells the story of those years in Henry Miller in Big Sur, a free PDF I am glad to share. Reading it, I knew the place at once. The fog. The long road up. The quiet.
That quiet is part of why my father made jewelry there. The ridge shaped how we work. Slowly, by hand, one piece at a time, in recycled high karat gold. The studio is in the mountains now, but the ridge is where it started.
Every piece we make is one of a kind. A little of that cabin goes into each one.
Ali Lee
