Today we’d like to introduce you to Susan Delphine Delaney
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Growing up in DC, I’d visit the museums often. Mother would pin two car tokens to my blouse collar and hand me a sack lunch. I’d take a bus and a streetcar to the Washington Mall. The Museum of Natural History was my favorite, and the Hall of Gems and Minerals my most frequent destination. This would shape both my early career and my later foray into jewelry making.
Money was tight, and my science fair project about crystals won me a berth at the International Science and Engineering Fair and tuition, and room and board scholarships, to the University of Maryland.
I used my BS in Chemistry to work for five years and save half of what I earned to fund my MS and MD. I trained as a psychiatrist, serving amazing folks in Collin and Dallas County. I also worked two days a week for some years with homeless, mentally ill persons in downtown Dallas, and was the psychiatrist for a Safe House for trafficked women in a nearby county.
All the while, I was busy crafting. Knitting. Quilting. Writing Haiku. Making ikebana (Japanese flower arrangements.), and painting Enso, Japanese one-breath circles.
Then I was drawn back to gems and minerals. I began to make jewelry. I was a busy doctor and I wanted to put on my own jewelry and forget about it all day. I made jewelry like that. Jewelry with pearls, gems, minerals, ceramics and lamp work. All-day comfortable jewelry.
I opened my Etsy shop, SusanDolphinDelaney on April 2, 2019 (who would open a shop on April Fool’s Day?)
I have 420 followers and all 121 of my reviews are five stars. Many months I have been an Etsy Star Seller and Etsy rates me as a Top Shop for Gifts.
www.susandolphin.delaney.etsy.com
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
My family was one with slender financial resources. I am grateful for the free school lunches from Kindergarten through twelfth grade. Dad was a low-paid photographer at one of the medical schools in DC. He’d take one of us kids with him to work on Saturdays, and on summer days. I hung out with a Japanese grad student when I was there and she inspired me to seek higher education. My endless days in the Hall of Gems and Minerals inspired my science project with crystals, and that led to two scholarships, one for tuition and one for room and board, at the University of Maryland. I am so grateful for those scholarships and for the work/study in the Chemistry Department, where my major was based. I sewed many of my own clothes. I’d visit the mall to see the new styles, then go to a discount store to find seconds that I could repair with my sewing skills. I graduated with no debt and worked for five years, saving half of what I earned for my dream of grad school and med school. Sewing and crafting have been a big part of my life, always. Looking back, I can see I was always headed toward jewelry making.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I come from a family of artist/scientists and scientist/artists, so it is no surprise that I became a physician/jewelry maker. Dad was a medical photographer. My brother was photographer for the EPA for its first 25 years. One grandfather was a dentist, which requires both science and art. And my dearest aunt was a jeweler/occupational therapist.
My work as a busy professional woman taught me the important lesson that jewelry should be beautiful but not fussy. I wanted jewelry that I could put on in the morning and forget. Naturally, that is the kind of jewelry that I make.
Can you share something surprising about yourself?
I had to visit with an FBI agent, after one of my patients, who was committed to the State hospital, called the FBI and told them that I was going to kill the then president, Jimmy Carter. The agent had to visit with the patient, too. I was reading the chart and simultaneously timing his interview. 45 seconds! I pulled his tail and said that his interviewing course at Quantico must have been amazing.
Pricing:
- $29-$99, with most at $39
Contact Info:
- Website: www.susandolphindelaney.etsy.com
