Forged from the Heart

When you walk onto Jes MaHarry’s Sun Horse Ranch, you’re first greeted by a friendly butler: Juniper the donkey. On his heels is Henry the horse, followed closely by Roxy the dog, all three with tails wagging and noses nuzzling. The warm welcome is made even more pleasant with the knowledge that they, like the other 20 or so other animals living on the idyllic Ojai property, have been saved from lives of abuse or slaughter by MaHarry, whose compassion for all things living is matched only by her talent for making jewelry.

The New York native and married mother of two has crafted herself over the past 18 years into a household name with a wildly successful and much sought after line of handmade charms that have garnered the admiration of both everyday folks and celebrities like Hilary Clinton and Jennifer Aniston. But rather than let the success inflate her pride — MaHarry has been the top selling jewelry designer in Sundance Catalog for 10 years running — she uses whatever time is left in her busy day of raising a family and running an eco-minded business to put back into communities a sense of awareness and love that, she sometimes feels, there just isn’t enough of.

“It gets to the point where I get completely overwhelmed by the sadness in this world,” MaHarry said over iced green tea recently. “It’s so disheartening what’s happening to animals and the environment.” Motivated by the birth of her children and spurred, she said, by a bit of unapologetic feistiness that came with age and maturity, MaHarry finds herself channeling her energy and professional success more and more into raising funds and consciousness for charitable causes. “Little by little I’m getting stronger in my beliefs,”said MaHarry, speaking a mile a minute with an infectious enthusiasm. “I usually kept it quiet before, but now I’d like to be that voice and take it to the next level.”