3 Good Things with Madison Snider PodpirkaThe jewelry designer and founder on making new mom friends, running a business while navigating parenthood, and her best advice for buying fine jewelry if you're just getting started.
Late last year, Madison Snider Podpirka reached out about doing something together, and it was an immediate yes for me. I’d been following her fine jewelry studio, Fewer Finer, for a few years and had already bought one of my favorite rings from her. Their pieces are minimalist but never boring: thoughtful, unfussy, and designed to be worn every day (which, IMO, is exactly how fine jewelry should function - my “nice” pieces basically never come off my body). As we got to know each other, the collaboration naturally deepened. We ended up co-designing a custom ring using a few diamonds I’d inherited, and the final result is deeply sentimental and special, a true heirloom piece I can’t wait to pass on to my daughter one day. You can scroll to the bottom of today’s post to see what we made together. Beyond loving the work she puts into each piece, I was drawn to Madison’s approach to taste, refinement, and daily life, especially as she’s navigated her own first year of motherhood while also running a growing business. So today, I asked her to share her 3 Good Things. Below, Madison talks about the eternal question of how to make mom friends, how to get started with buying fine jewelry, and THE most meaningful mother-daughter gift I’ve ever heard of (which I immediately copied!).
Madison Snider Podpirka’s 3 Good Things
On Motherhood & LifeWhat’s helping you feel most like yourself in this season? Being a mom and getting to run a business I love at the same time is itself what really makes me feel most like myself right now. Doing both roles, which requires compartmentalization, creativity, and a new definition of priorities is what is shaping my current season of motherhood.
Has becoming a mother influenced your relationship to work or creativity? To my surprise, becoming a mom has made it really easy for me to put aside my work when I am with my family. Before we had a child, I didn’t do that well. Sometimes I think it’s the best thing for my work and creativity, and other times it does slow both down, but I’m okay with that. What advice would you give yourself as a new mom? The new mom friends you’re making are important! Invest your time and energy into them! The IRL connection is really nice. While I have a good number of friends with kids, most of them are not local to New York City, so it has been nice to make new mom friends who I can actually run into, meet up with, or talk about the things my son and I are involved in, like classes, schools, and pilates. Many of my New York friends don’t have kids yet so their nights and weekends are spent differently, which has means my new parent friends have been fun to get together with on a Saturday at 9am with the kids at the park, or on a weeknight for a glass of wine at 8pm after we put our kids down and just want an hour or two to connect. In other words, I think parents use their free time and time with their kids differently, and it’s been nice to find new friends on the same page.
Most of my mom friends I have met organically at coffee shops with strollers, talking at the park, or because our kids are playing together. I do think Brooklyn makes it easy to meet new people since you live outside of your home a lot and are in such close proximity that you see a lot of the same people often, especially if your kids are at the same stage of life. [Ed. Note: Do city moms have it best when it comes to community-building??] For some reason, most of the mom friends I have made have multiple kids, and I don’t know if that is by accident or because they are a bit more confident, a bit more aware of the value of the friendships. Usually we would exchange numbers, meet up with the kids, and then do something without kids if there was a nice connection.
Can you walk us through a typical day for you and your family? My husband and I love to wake up before our son and have coffee together. Maybe one of us will workout and then we’ll get my son up, make breakfast, and ideally go for a walk together before our nanny arrives at 9am. We feel like the luckiest family in Brooklyn to have gotten connected with her. She is the perfect fit for us and we love her dearly! I’ll usually bike to work and spend the day in a mix of internal meetings, showroom appointments, and time alone at my desk. I’ll wrap up after 5 and try to get home in time to see my son have dinner at 5:30 while I start to prepare ours. Our nanny leaves at 6. We like to have dinner soon after, then play or take a walk before bath and bedtime for our son. Once my son goes to sleep, it’s only about an hour before I do, unless I’m going out to dinner with friends, in which case I try my best to get a second wind! What does your “you time” look like when you can squeeze it in? When I put my son to bed, I also put my phone “to bed” for the night. Then I take off my outfit from the day, dry brush my body, and take a long, hot shower. It’s such an important ritual in my day! Fine Jewelry 101: How To Get StartedOver the past year, I’ve heard from several Downtime readers who want to invest more intentionally in fine jewelry, but aren’t quite sure where to begin. Madison is a certified expert, so I asked her a few basic questions to help us demystify the process. What’s your best advice for someone interested in investing in fine jewelry? Start with something meaningful. That could be because it incorporates hand engraving with a name, place, or word, or because it was just something beautiful you loved and assigned your own meaning to. The type of fine jewelry I design is like a second skin in that you can wear it every single day for the rest of your life.
How do you recommend caring for pieces you wear every day? Showering with your pieces is generally the best way to keep them clean, no polishing or special tools required. [Note: Just with precious metals (14k, 18k, and platinum)! If something is plated, filled, or brass, it sadly does not do well with constant wear or water.] For jewelry with diamonds, it is nice to give the piece a little scrub in a bath of warm water and dish soap every so often to get them sparkling and fresh. Also, don’t sleep in your jewelry (do as I say, not as I do!) and don’t work out in it. Otherwise, you should be able to wear it for everything else! What’s one underrated jewelry detail or styling trick people often overlook? The inside of rings and the clasps of necklaces and bracelets are great, small spaces to add a little bit of personalization with hand engraving. I love putting a monogram or date on a clasp or adding words or phrases to the inside of rings!
Is there a piece of jewelry you never take off, and what’s the story behind it? My Family Bracelet. This started as a very long and very unique vintage chain I found years ago and took apart to make into four individual bracelets. I kept the one with the original clasp for myself and added the names of my family members to the links. I love looking down throughout the day and seeing the names of everyone in my family, from my brothers to my nieces and nephews! People loved the idea, so I replicated the vintage piece exactly and added it to our collection.
What are some recent favorite examples of client engravings, heirloom redesigns, or sentimental pieces that you can share with us?
A really sentimental piece we finished late last year was this engagement ring that was a redesigned piece from a family necklace the groom had inherited. I love that the finished piece looks so different from the original and that it meant so much to our client to have this stone featured in the ring he proposed with. On Personal Style and TasteThe Fewer Finer Townhouse, which was recently finished, looks gorgeous, and I can tell a lot of thought went into the space. What are some of your favorite details? Thank you! It was such a fun project for me to work on, and it’s a dream come true to step into this space every day! I really love our custom-built brass top table that came from South Africa, our ribbon door handles, and our artwork throughout. One piece I recently added to the collection is a print by my friend Nico Schinco.
How would you describe your own personal style right now, and has it evolved since becoming a mom? I feel like each year that passes, I understand my true personal style more and more. I don’t think it’s changed much since being a mom, likely because my style is so casual. What I think has evolved is a more sure sense of what I like, what does not suit me, and what I feel really good about investing in. What would you typically wear for a day of work? And on the weekends? For me, this is typically the same thing! I am a pants-first dresser - usually jeans (these are my recent favorites) or Shon Pants, and then a t-shirt and a sweater. I love shoes, so I have a bit more fun there.
On workdays, I wear these favorite boots or a great flat, but on weekends, I am often in Sambas or Birkenstocks (my favorite shoe since about age 12)! What’s a meaningful gift you’ve given or received? My mom sent me a box of Valentine’s Day cards when I was a freshman in college, my first year away from home. I didn’t know what it was, and when I opened it up, I learned that she had written me a love letter every year since the year I was born. It is still the most meaningful gift I have ever received. I hope to keep this tradition with my kids and am wildly impressed that my mom took the time to do this each year for all four of her kids and kept it a surprise until they were delivered. [Ed. Note: I loved this idea so much that I had to borrow it. Such a sweet and thoughtful gesture.] Now, a bit about the ring Madison and her team custom-designed for me… The brief: I knew I wanted to create a piece I could eventually pass on to Lily, my daughter, and make use of the small, loose diamonds I had inherited. The first step was to mail my diamonds to Madison and her team. I was nervous to do this - send diamonds through the mail?! - but it was totally fine as the package is insured and was delivered quickly.
Next, we went back and forth on a few design ideas. Since I already love the design of Fewer Finer’s Crescent Ring, we decided to create a custom version of the design using my loose diamonds, and pair that with a engraving of my daughter’s name on the interior of the band.
During the process, we learned that my diamonds were slightly larger than what typically goes into the Cresent Ring design and were poking through slightly in the back. The team was great about checking in with me before proceeding to customize the engraving to make sure it looked good:
And this is the end result! I love how the engraving turned out, with the calligraphic style. I can’t wait to pass this ring on to Lily one day. The diamonds truly shine in the front of the piece, which is what I had envisioned:  The final result, as modeled by Madison....
If you’re interested in a custom piece of jewelry, whether it’s resetting an existing engagement ring or heirloom from a grandparent, custom-engraving a charm necklace, or even getting help with creating something completely new and original, I can’t recommend working with the Fewer Finer team enough. What I love most is the TIME, care, and real craftsmanship by masters of their art who work on your piece. Take a scroll through their IG just to see what they’ve been working on and get inspired. Thanks for reading, and thank you, Madison, for sharing with us. If you’d like, she’s just begun her own Substack newsletter here, which I already love. You can follow Fewer Finer on Instagram @fewerfiner. And please drop any q’s you have for Madison about fine jewelry in the comments below! While this post is not sponsored, the custom ring was gifted by Fewer Finer as part of our collaboration.
You’re currently a free subscriber to Downtime. If you love what you read and discover here, consider upgrading to paid for the full experience and get access to exclusive subscriber-only content. THANK YOU for being here!
|
četvrtak, 12. veljače 2026.
3 Good Things with Madison Snider Podpirka
Pretplati se na:
Komentari (Atom)
3 Good Things with Madison Snider Podpirka
The jewelry designer and founder on making new mom friends, running a business while navigating parenthood, and her best advice for buying f...
-
Plus: Kicking off Pride Month with the new Goodnewspaper and more good news to celebrate! ...
-
NOTE: This newsletter might be cut short by your email program. View it in full . If a friend forwarded it to you and you'd like y...
-
Plus: A landmark ruling for new fossil fuel projects and more good news to celebrate! ...
