The Land of Salt

Before she made jewelry, the founder of The Land of Salt spent 22 years clogging. From age five to 27 she toured with an international folk dance team, and since, as she put it, the U.S. did not have traditional folk dances like the other countries, the team mostly performed the Appalachian step dance in places like Poland and Brazil. The jewelry came later, in Salt Lake City, from a ring she saw online.

Erica Hoggan had no experience when she carried a picture of that ring into a jewelry supply store, and the design turned out to be far beyond a beginner. She started with wire wrapping and beading and taught herself soldering and silversmithing from there. Her parents had called her Tape Girl as a kid, for the constructions she taped together around the house, so the instinct was not new.

From 2010 to 2018 she worked at a commercial real estate brokerage that specialized in industrial properties. The Land of Salt began out of her home, selling online. In 2015 she opened a small shared shop on Pierpont Avenue with her friend Stacey Foster of Mineral & Matter. In 2018 both businesses moved to the Maven District on 900 South, as next-door neighbors.

Gold-fill has been her signature since the early days, back before tutorials made it easy to work with. Today she and a small team of women make about 70 percent of the line in the back of the shop, and pieces with delicate mechanics, like hinged hoops, come from a factory in Thailand. The company says its plated studs carry gold 1 micron thick, eight times the 0.125 micron it calls the industry standard.

Wholesale is a large share of the business, with the jewelry in more than 150 stores across the country and a few in France and the Netherlands. When COVID hit in 2020, those orders dried up almost at once. "Retail saved us," she told Salt Lake Sideways, and she went six months without paying herself before the business came out of it with its best year yet.

The shop now also carries candles and books from other small makers, with an emphasis on women-owned ones. Hoggan teaches jewelry workshops once or twice a week. She says she could never go back to a conventional job. "I feel like I've been ruined for life," she told Sideways, which is the kindest review industrial real estate has ever received.

The name is a nod to Salt Lake City, and the line still leans on it. The Big Sky Ring, a sterling silver oval hand-stamped with a night sky, is made to order in Salt Lake City.