ABOUT
The name was always there.
ZADA comes from Eileen QueZADA's own last name — something she has carried her whole life, along with her eye for stones.
She started making jewelry in elementary school. Not as a hobby. As a compulsion. Her friends noticed. They asked for pieces. She made them. That cycle of making, giving, people wanting more... never really stopped.
In 2008, she made it official. Started buying stones with intention. Started building what ZADA would become. Then in 2010, she was laid off. For most people, that's a stopping point. For Eileen, it was the opening she didn't know she needed. She used that time to build inventory: sourcing gemstones, crystals, fossils, shells, and pearls. Developing relationships with suppliers. Establishing direct connections with turquoise mines, including access to rough stones most jewelry makers never see.
By 2012, in the middle of a recession, when everyone was holding their money tighter: ZADA was selling. Consistently.
Handcrafted work, made from real stones, by a real person with a real eye for what sells itself, doesn't need an economic tailwind.
The Craft
Every ZADA piece is handcrafted by Eileen. One at a time, from materials she selects herself. She works with consciously mined gemstones, crystals, fossils, shells, and pearls sourced from around the world. Some come from gem shows. Some from supplier relationships she has cultivated for years. Some from turquoise mines she has personal access to: rough material that most makers never see.
No piece is ever made twice. The stone that exists is the stone that exists. When it's gone, it's gone.
Eileen's approach draws from the tradition of Native jewelry made by indigenous artisans: a lineage that treats the work as slow, material, and meant for something. The stone tells her what a piece wants to become. Its shape tells her whether it belongs on a man or a woman. Sometimes it's the chain that completes it. She tries it on. She feels it. She knows.
And so do the people who find her.
The Woman Behind It
Eileen QueZADA is a Creative Director, Founder, and Designer based in Southern California. She is also a dancer, a wellness practitioner, a music lover, and a woman rooted in her Mexican-American heritage — a lineage with a deep tradition of understanding what the earth carries, and how we carry it.
She lives in Southern California with her family. She still makes every piece herself.
This is not fast jewelry. It is not trend jewelry. It is not made in China.
It is made by Eileen. One piece at a time. Because she has always done it this way, and it has never not worked.