Meet Sam: CMD’s Product Development Pro

There are a lot of hands involved in making CMD jewelry, and Sam's have been part of the story for a very long time. When I first wrote about her in 2020, she'd already been on the team for more than three and a half years. A year later, we celebrated her fifth CMD anniversary. Now, as she approaches a full decade as part of this little jewelry business, it's even more fun to look back at how much she has grown and how much her role has evolved right along with CMD.

Sam came to CMD without any jewelry production experience. What she did have was curiosity, patience, an incredible eye for detail and the kind of brain that wants to understand how things work. She jumped in, learned quickly and became one of those people who seemed like she'd been doing this work forever.

From Learning the Bench to Making CMD Jewelry

When Sam first started, she was learning jewelry production from the ground up. Handmade jewelry is full of individual steps that are easy to forget when you're looking at the finished piece. Metal is cut, formed, soldered, filed, sanded, finished, inspected and adjusted by actual human hands. Sometimes a piece passes back and forth several times before we're satisfied with it.

Sam became very good at those details very quickly. She notices the tiny things. She has patience for the parts of the process that can't be rushed, and she's one of those wonderfully capable people who can figure out how to make something work when I hand her a new idea.

If you've owned CMD jewelry for a while, there's a very good chance Sam's hands have been part of something in your collection.

From the Bench to Product Development

Over time, Sam's skill, persistence and attention to detail allowed her role to keep evolving. What began with learning jewelry production grew into a much bigger part of how new CMD designs actually come to life.

Sam and I work closely together on product development, taking ideas from sketches and experiments to jewelry we can make beautifully and consistently. I may start with an idea, a shape or some half-formed thing in my head, but there's a whole process between that first spark and a finished piece of jewelry.

A fraction of a millimeter can change how something sits, how two rings stack together or whether a detail feels exactly right. Sam has become one of the people I trust most to work through those questions with me.

She's creative, incredibly capable and willing to keep working through a problem until we arrive somewhere we're both happy with. That ability has become an essential part of the way CMD designs are developed today.

The Tiny Details Really Do Matter

One of the things I've always appreciated most about Sam is her ability to notice what other people might miss. There are tiny adjustments another person might never see, but we see them.

That's part of what handmade means to me. It isn't simply that a person touched the jewelry somewhere along the way. It's that human judgment is involved throughout the process. Someone is deciding whether an edge feels right, whether a finish is even, whether two pieces sit together the way they're supposed to and whether something deserves another trip back to the bench before it leaves the studio.

Sam has exactly the patience that kind of work requires.

Handmade Still Means Something Here

Today, I design from Asbury Park and our jewelry is handmade by our small production team in Upstate New York. Sam has also spent years working from her own home studio, a chapter of the CMD story you can read more about in CMD Outpost #3.

We have tools and systems that help us work efficiently, but there isn't a machine somewhere spitting out finished CMD jewelry. There are people behind these pieces. There are hands holding files, torches, hammers and polishing tools.

That human part of the process is one of the things I value most about what we make, and Sam has been one of those humans for a pretty damn long time.

Nearly a Decade of CMD

CMD has changed enormously since Sam joined the team, and so has her role within it. We've moved studios, changed coasts, refined collections, expanded our Reconstruction and Custom work and built entirely new ways of working with clients.

Through all of those changes, Sam has remained one of the people helping turn what I imagine into something tangible.

Our team is small, which means every person matters enormously. There isn't much room for someone to simply stay in one lane. We problem-solve together, learn from each other and rely on one another in ways that can be difficult to explain from the outside.

What started as Sam learning the bench has grown into nearly a decade of making, experimenting, problem-solving and helping shape how CMD jewelry gets from an idea in my head to something you can actually put on your body.

CMD wouldn't be the same without her.

Here's to all the tiny details, big ideas and jewelry still left to make.
Colleen

 

© Colleen Mauer Designs. All rights reserved.
Published: May 6, 2020
Updated: August 22, 2026