Miami-Based Miansai Finds Art In iPhones With Help From Artist Gab Bois

Miansai is handcrafted jewelry by its founder Michael Saiger, creating elegant art objects made in Miami. With the help of his wife Rachael, the Miansai brand has cultivated its local business of artisans, based in the Wynwood Miami Design District, into a global name found in department stores, boutiques, and on platforms like Saks Fifth Ave., Bloomingdales, and Mr. Porter, to name a few.

The native New Yorker Michael Saiger began making jewelry while studying at the University of Miami, noticing a lack of designer jewelry for men. He found trinkets, relics, and antique pieces that he revived and crafted into wearable works of art. A mother who owned and operated an antique store, Saiger was keen to source out illustrious relics and convert them to jewelry.

By 2008, Michael Saiger launched Miansai, a mashup or portmanteau of his full name, diligently fulfilling department store orders uncertain he could fill. At that time, Saiger was privy to brands like John Hardy and David Yurman dominating the men’s jewelry market. Eventually, coming to terms with making jewelry he’d want to wear that was elevated and still understated.

Michael recalls this moment he would manifest his ideas as an organic feeling curated through his upbringing. “It was cool to create something that hadn’t been done before in men’s jewelry. Because of how I grew up – around antiques and design – converting the pieces and bringing them to life felt natural to me.”

Fast-forward to 2022, Miansai has elevated its operation as a vessel for artists like Gab Bois of Montreal to display her handcrafted surreal-fashion pieces. The Gab Bois collaborative collection was launched at Art Basel in Miami at the Miansai Wynwood headquarters and gallery space.

There, the Miansai team spends time drawing up collections of jewelry pieces and can globally source the materials like metallics and leather from reputable factories in Italy, Turkey, and Asia. Some jewelry pieces and accessories are made there in whole or portions. Miansai jewelry pieces are sampled, plated, cleaned, refurbished, and assembled all in-house.

Bois is well-known, and in her own right, for her subversive take on fashion garments and accessories made from found objects. Within her creation process, Bois can take months to a year to complete pieces like her Scrabble-letter dress and purse or something more delectable, like her woven sweater made of ‘Sour Power’ belt candies.

“I was thrilled when the team reached out [to me] because one of my main goals for this year is to work on more physical products,” says Bois. “I want to take my ideas and concepts out of the digital world and into people’s hands and houses, and this opportunity is 100% aligned with that goal.”

For Miansai, Bois has refurbished iPhone pieces into wearable jewelry. The camera lens and chip in our iPhones are repurposed and made into adornments for a bracelet, rings, earrings, and necklace pendants in the Miansai staple minimalist aesthetic. Each piece was carefully extracted from the iPhones by Bois. Her delicate hand as an artist is intricate to her creations involving food items like crackers or banana peels.

Retrieving the camera lens posed an issue with its sensitive lens glass, finding salvageable iPhones. Like at the Miansai headquarters in Wynwood, where items are ideated, crafted, sampled, and assembled, all at the same facility, Bois essentially joined the team to actualize her vision. As many as ‘100’ iPhones were recycled, as noted by Bois, a peek into sustainable solutions for brands with the bandwidth to innovate creative applications.

Michael Saiger has also followed in his mother’s footsteps, finding objects and modern artifacts of the past and reviving them for a second life as installation art objects. Saiger has created a mobile fleet the brand references as its experiential retail spaces inside reimagined, refurbished vehicles.

Saiger has restored a 1964 Piaggio purchased in Capri, and a 1964 Lambretta discovered in Sicily, Italy. A shiny tin can-like 1948 Airstream II was found and sourced from a vintage vehicle collector in Wyoming, all of which are permanent “pop-up” shops for the brand. Saiger has also collected several motorbikes and a retro two-door Land Rover Defender.

Miansai jewelry offers timepieces and leather goods in addition to its timely staples. “We obsess over every detail of craftsmanship by focusing on creating a streamlined, clean look in the final product for our customers that’s original and timeless,” he notes.

As a local Miami business, Miansai’s handcrafted minimal designs are ever-evolving. It has expanded operations in creating accessories like leather bags, leatherbound notepads, and 2.5-micron gold vermeil-plated pens, similar to its plated jewelry pieces.

The brand is sold online and globally in 40 states and 36 countries, with flagship boutiques in New York City and Los Angeles, each designed with exposed brick, Italian porcelain, and Scandanavian design finishes. Miansai gives back to its Wynwood and greater Miami community, besides the fact that the Saiger family has residency in Puerto Rico.

Miansai has sponsored the United States-based non-profit Style Saves, founded by Rachael Saiger in 2011, providing underprivileged students with school uniforms, supplies, clothing, and other necessities for productive learning. The arts and crafts skills of an aspiring college student is a sentiment that has developed into a valued brand that hones artisan skills as part of its ethos.