The Letter

Oakland wandering, loaded machines, and an invitation among 6,000 roses.

Week of May 4–11

It's been a week of small movements adding up to something.

A BART ride across the bay to sit with a friend while she was measured for a custom corset — for her wedding. I got to hold fabric swatches and weigh in on hardware, which is exactly my idea of a good Tuesday.

A thrift run that produced something I cannot fully explain: a large, warped, beautiful wooden book stand. Possibly — I am choosing to believe this — a pulpit stand from a local church. I have never seen one at a thrift store before. I may never see one again. I do not know yet what I will do with it. It spoke to me and I answered. Some things are like that.

Wednesday I took to the streets — mindfully the day after Cinco de Mayo — and settled in at Otto's in the Kissel hotel in downtown Oakland. First time I've ever seen a non-alcoholic Riesling on a menu, out in the wild, just sitting there like it belonged. I ordered it and worked on the May fortunes. The afternoon was exactly what it sounds like: unhurried, good light, a glass of something interesting, and the pleasurable problem of writing luck for strangers.

Friday I took my son to Blake Garden — a hidden UC Berkeley garden tucked into the Oakland hills, full of terraced views and the feeling that you've wandered to the top of the world through somebody's backyard. That evening we made it to OMCA Fridays, which I recommend without qualification: free music, picnic energy, the kind of community that makes you remember why Oakland is genuinely special. And today — Sunday — we spent the afternoon at the rose garden. 6,000 roses in bloom, and a kid who was entirely unimpressed and also couldn't stop touching everything.

A borrowed Cricut arrived mid-week (thank you, bestie). Experiment No. 2 is already brewing. The crochet top is making progress.

The machines are loaded. Three of them, full of capsules — yellow, red, blue-purple — each one stamped with the Dark Parlour Society seal. The first set of fortune slips is printed. May 2026, 24 slips in the series. Slip No. 4 is called The Moth.

Standing in the rose garden today with my son — looking at the scale of it, the fact that it's just there, free and open — I kept thinking: more people should know about this. Not as a performance. Just because beauty is better shared. So we're doing something about that.

Parlour Lawn Party No. 01 — Among the Roses

Saturday, May 16 · 1–3 PM
25 people. Blankets on the lawn. Parlour games. A craft table. And the Go Wander machine making its very first public appearance — fortunes among the roses.

→ RSVP on Eventbrite

More soon. Thank you for being here while this becomes what it's becoming.
— Jem

I've been on Instagram since 2010. That's not a fact I say with pride exactly, but I don't say it with shame either. For a long time, it was just where I lived online — where I posted my zines, my jewelry, my process, my face. It was how people found me and how I found people.

And then, sometime in the last year, I deleted it. Not deactivated — deleted. Both accounts. The jemnifur personal account I'd had since 2010, and the Dark Parlour Society account I'd been carefully building. Gone.

This letter is about that, and about what came after. About moving into a smaller space. About what it means to document a practice without performing it. About the difference between making and marketing, and why I've spent so long confusing the two.

A worm, a train, a dollar, and a knob you turn.

April was my birthday month — a quiet look, I did it. Another year. 41. Let's go.

I took a 9-hour Amtrak from Oakland down to Santa Barbara. First time in Southern California. Train travel is now officially my favorite way to move through the world — this was my third trip by rail this year. Back home, I embraced a Japanese-inspired, serene and cozy bedroom vibe.

I read Piranesi by Susanna Clarke — one of those books where you start dreading the last hundred pages. Themes about being in the middle of something you don't fully understand and finding a way to love it anyway. Highly recommend. Also picked up Company of One by Paul Jarvis — the clearest articulation I've found of "enough" as a business philosophy.

A bumper sticker stopped me — a little illustrated worm: "you've been blessed by this worm, your dreams will now come true." The joke is permission. That's the energy I've been building toward.

Go Wander is the first experiment under Dark Parlour Society. Analog fortune capsule vending machines placed inside locally-owned Oakland businesses. For $1 you turn a knob: a fortune slip, a task, a song, lucky numbers, a wax seal sticker, and a postcard connecting all machines into a collect-all game across the city.

The Monthly Fortune is $7/month — I write your fortune by hand, tailored to you. A postcard arrives at your door. Subscribe at darkparloursociety.com.

More soon. — Jem

I've been on Instagram since 2010. That's not a fact I say with pride exactly, but I don't say it with shame either. For a long time it was genuinely useful. What I didn't notice was how slowly the water was warming. So I left.

I've been reading Cal Newport, researching phone addiction and what algorithmic exposure does to a person's sense of their own wants. What I've found on the other side of leaving: I'm less influenced. I'm getting clearer on what I actually like. What I genuinely want to make.

I'm finally renting my own space again. Small. Modest. Manageable — and that word has become genuinely precious to me. The jewelry work has been shifting too. The metal fabrication course changed that. Somewhere in the basic work — cutting, filing, bending, flame — I found focus. Dark Parlour is becoming something bigger than a jewelry brand. Something more like a philosophy.

I put Project Hail Mary on while I crocheted and finished all ten hours in a single weekend. Then Bride! — Maggie Gyllenhaal's film. I have already started sourcing fabric to make my own version of the Bride's dress, obviously.

The Pocket Ledger — a single-sheet printable commonplace book. → Download free.

More soon. Thank you for being here — genuinely. — Jem

Embracing life's upheavals with introspection, fresh reads, an inspiring metalsmithing class and fitness gains.

I've been noticing something lately — a lot of my friends are going through major life changes at the beginning of their 40s. We're the first generation with widespread access to mental health care. We're doing the work our parents' generation couldn't or didn't do.

January was a month of moving and grieving and rebuilding. I joined a gym. 5:30am. Lifting weights for the first time since leaving NYC in 2018 — a quiet solidarity I didn't know I needed.

My metalsmithing class at Richmond Art Center started. The teacher's name is Ricki and I got to LIGHT COPPER ON FIRE. You anneal it — heat it to make it malleable — then throw it into water and it makes this crazy sound and is instantly cool to the touch. So neat.

February. Open space. The work continues. —Jem

How I spent a decade pushing against garment-making, discovered jewelry by accident, and learned to separate being an artist from running a business.

It's December 31st at 7:31pm and I've already attended and left my "New Years Eve" party by myself at Book Society in Berkeley. I was dressed in Dark Parlour grandeur — silk bias cut dress, green fringe, 1940s hat, watch face choker in black.

2025 was the year I closed the chapter on garment making after ten years — from NYC to Oakland shipping containers to Jack London Square studio to living on my own. The work showed results, but certain things always eluded me.

I picked up jewelry making on a whim. Started sourcing lost pieces at antique stores, visualizing them as something else. And then making something come to life and WEARING it. Finally, something that worked WITH my brain. Upon finishing "The Alchemist" I had to acknowledge I am an artist. My purpose was never to make things to sell — it's to make something from my mind come into reality. This split my work into two paths: Jem DeSanti — my art practice. And Dark Parlour — custom mourning jewelry, when the technique develops.

Dark Parlour will launch in 2026. The collections will continue. The skills will deepen. —Jem