Biography of Byron Ushina and Alexandra Aguirre

I was born on the 20th of May 1975, and I graduated with a degree in accounting with my major being auditing.  I began learning the art of silver smiting at the age of fifteen, as an apprentice of my very skilled father.

Pedro Ushina, my father, has been creating fine jewelry (predominately gold), for more than forty years.  He has worked using many techniques, both well-known and innovative, in order to create unusual and distinctive hand-made pieces.  Many of these techniques have been handed down by the ancient indigenous people of South America and in turn on to the pre-Incan and Incan peoples, for which our continent is so well known.  Later, with the arrival of the Spanish, some of the jewelry changed from "typically South American", to the baroque style that we now sometimes see.  So, with the different people and various cultures, techniques and styles have changed, been enhanced, and improved over time.

I am married to Alexandra Aguirre who was born on the 15th of July 1976.  After learning my craft from my talented father, in 1996, Alexandra and I decided to branch our into the very competitive world of working with and designing silver jewelry. 

Our constant innovativeness and search for improvement in creating jewelry, along with our ample knowledge of our ancestry and investigation of information, has assisted us immensely.  As well as being aware of anthropological and archaeological knowledge, we also endeavor to keep well informed in the areas of marketing and graphic design.  This has enabled us to get to where we are now!

We believe in ourselves and in our products.  We know that we do things well, and that our products are both rich in quality and design.  This has been made clear to us in the way in which our work has been accepted in our own country, Ecuador, over the last ten years, as well as the international acceptance we have received in the last six years. 

Five years ago our products began to be recognized and appreciated in countries such as Colombia, Chile, Brazil, and other Latin American counties.  The constant economic problems of South America however, encouraged us to look toward other, although more competitive markets, like the United States and Canada.  This led on to interested parties in Europe, encompassing cities such as Paris, London, Bonn, and Amsterdam.  Our products and designs in these places have been highly accepted and praised.

The search to see our market prosper and grow has been tireless. We have taken into consideration the need to change or create designs, as well as relaying the culture to which our jewelry pertains to the world. We have been able to do this by displaying our pieces temporarily in prestigious galleries in countries such as the United States of America, Canada, England,  Germany, Spain, Japan, Brazil, and France. However, we believe that our challenge is to create work in our own country, hopefully creating a better way and quality of life for our people 

Allow us to introduce ourselves. Our company creates and makes distinctive and unusually handcrafted silver jewelry of the highest quality.

Our range of our jewelry is handcrafted in Ecuador, South America, and uses a number of unusual techniques using  silver .950. We create our pieces by hand, making each piece unique. Our work entails the use of Incan symbols and designs, each having a significant meaning and use, and we also use various semi-precious stones, all of which are from the South American continent. Whereas some of these stones are used as whole pieces in the silver jewelry. We also use a technique of crushing these semi-precious stones to provide enamel-like, but earthier, effect.

Your customers, therefore, would be buying something which is a work of art, uniquely beautiful, and ultimately symbolic of South American culture.

These pieces are for the customer who wants something “out of the ordinary”, something striking or something different, an incomparable gift for themselves or for someone special.  Ushiña  designs  can offer then this!

We embrace the opportunity to be able to show you this distinctive, yet beautiful range, and know that you will be enchanted by it.

Regards,

Byron Ushiña & Alexandra Aguirre