Jem DeSanti

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

Week of May 4–11

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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). I've been testing it for some new products I'm developing. Experiment No. 2 is already brewing. The crochet top is making progress. I'm hoping to finish it before summer ends, which is the goal, and we'll see.

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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. I'll let it speak for itself when you encounter it.

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, mostly un-photographed by people who aren't already in the habit of going — 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.

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Parlour Lawn Party No. 01 — Among the Roses

Saturday, May 16 · 1–3 PM
Location shared with confirmed RSVPs the morning of

25 people. Blankets on the lawn. Parlour games designed for sitting and talking. A craft table. And the Go Wander machine making its very first public appearance — fortunes among the roses, which feels exactly right.

Bring something to share if you're moved to. Dress up if you want to — not for a theme, just your best self. It makes the afternoon better.

This is the first Dark Parlour Society event. It's small on purpose.

→ RSVP on Eventbrite

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

— Jem
Dark Parlour Society

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

April was my birthday month. For me that's an exuberant personal time — not necessarily a celebration I need others to mark with me, but more of 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. The resort was so lovely it was almost embarrassing. Train travel is now officially my favorite way to move through the world — this was my third trip by rail this year.

Back home, the loft bed I got when I first moved in turned out to not be what I needed. Facebook Marketplace found someone to disassemble it and take it away — and paid me for it. I'm back to the floor, embracing a Japanese-inspired, serene and cozy bedroom vibe.

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I was inspired to pick up Piranesi by Susanna Clarke — one of those books where you start dreading the last hundred pages because you don't want to leave. Themes about being in the middle of something you don't fully understand and finding a way to love it anyway. Highly recommend.

Also finally got my hands on Company of One by Paul Jarvis. I have a strong belief that there is such a thing as enough. This book is the clearest articulation I've found of that instinct as a business philosophy.

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I saw a bumper sticker that stopped me — a little illustrated worm declaring you've been blessed and your dreams will come true. The joke is permission. That's the energy I've been trying to build 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: inside, a fortune slip, a task, a song, lucky numbers, a wax seal sticker, and a postcard connecting all the machines into a collect-all game across the city.

The Monthly Fortune is $7/month — I write your fortune by hand, tailored to you, the season, your birth chart. 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 — a source of inspiration, a way of feeling connected to people who made things and cared about things.

What I didn't notice — not fully, not for a long time — was how slowly the water was warming. The platform changed in increments that were each individually forgettable, and I just kept adjusting. So I left. I've been reading Cal Newport, researching phone addiction and what extended 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.

On the practical side: I'm finally renting my own space again. Small. Modest. Manageable — and that word has become genuinely precious to me. Less space, fewer things, more peace than I expected.

The jewelry work has been shifting too. The metal fabrication course changed that. Somewhere in the basic work — cutting, filing, bending, the moment when you introduce flame and the metal shifts and submits — 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. What it's actually about is friendship — what happens when two beings discover the most profound connection is finding someone who lights up about the same things you do. And 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 that folds into a tiny 8-page zine. A commonplace book for the real, messy, beautiful stuff of everyday life. → 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 right now, 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.

So when I tell you January was a month of moving and grieving and rebuilding, know that it's part of that bigger story. I moved. I grieved. And I wasn't in the space to make the way I wanted to. But I made sure to give my brain what it needed to stay inspired.

I joined a gym. 5:30am. Lifting weights for the first time since leaving NYC in 2018. There's something about being in a shared space with other people choosing to show up and do hard things before dawn — a quiet solidarity I didn't know I needed.

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

February. Open space. That smoky blue color still living in my head. Studio unpacked and functional. 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 a great little place called Book Society in Berkeley where I sipped on a mocktail and left in the rain with two new books underneath my arm. I was dressed in Dark Parlour grandeur in a silk bias cut dress, my face enshrouded in thick green fringe, topped with a 1940s hat.

2025 was the year I took a good hard look at my daily sewing practice and said it's time to close that chapter. I spent 10 years learning garment making — from NYC to a newlywed in shipping containers in Oakland to a mom in my private studio in Jack London Square to a divorcee living on my own. The work showed results, but certain concepts always eluded me.

I decided to pick up jewelry making on a whim. I started sourcing lost pieces at antique stores, visualizing them as something else, reverse-engineering how things were put together. And then visualizing something, drawing it out and making it come to life and WEARING it. Finally, something that worked WITH my brain instead of against it.

It was upon finishing "The Alchemist" that I had to acknowledge I am an artist and that's what feeds my soul. My purpose was never to make things to sell — it's to make something from my mind come into reality. This thought process split my work into two paths: Jem DeSanti — my art practice. And Dark Parlour — where I'll eventually offer custom mourning jewelry.

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