Common Era’s Fragments Collection Honors What’s Broken

By Karen Dybis | May 19, 2026

With Common Era’s latest collection, founder Torie Tilley has again expanded her jewelry universe devoted to ancient history and mythology, and hand-selected artifacts were her latest muses.

But whose hands selected them? Not just Tilley’s but also her infant son’s. Tilley took the child on a trip to Paris that proved so inspiring, she had to create a jewelry collection as a result.

Fragments is a collection in progress, and its first five pieces, all in 14k gold, are based on pieces of historic relics that are displayed in Paris’ Louvre and other museums: the Three Graces statue, an Ionic column, a sculpture of two lovers, a loyal hound on somebody’s funerary relief, and an inscribed tablet.

Last January, Tilley and her husband found themselves with a sizable number of airline miles to use. So they headed to the City of Light, with their baby boy. It was hardly the best time of year for vacationing, but the trip proved to be one of the most memorable of their lives, she says.

Three Graces Common Era — *Common Era Three Graces pendant ($1,500)*

“We landed just before the biggest snowstorm Paris had ever had. It was magical,” recalls Tilley. “We walked over 20,000 steps with our son in the stroller at the Louvre, and there was basically no one else there.”

As Tilley describes it, the only sound in the museum seemed to come from their wet boots. She noticed her son, 8 months old at the time, observing everything around him as they entered the Greek and Roman antiquities section—and reaching out toward, as if he wanted to touch, a Three Graces fragment behind glass.

“I love the broken things, the things that get left behind,” Tilley says. “And here was another example. It is 2,000 years old, and it’s still here. My son can share a room with this ancient fragment.”

Tilley had decided soon after launching Common Era in 2019 that she would create collections not on a quarterly or annual basis but when something truly moved her. Those Three Graces did exactly that, and Tilley went on to add an Orphic tablet—a ritualistic object associated with the afterlife (and named for Orpheus)—to the mix.

“That tablet had been on my list for a while, and I wanted to get it into a collection. But I needed a cohesive way to pull it and other pieces together,” Tilley says. “With Fragments, it works. I will keep adding over time, like a museum would, creating a collection as it comes to me.”

Common Era Hound Gold

Another Fragments piece is inspired by the dogs carved onto ancient Greek and Roman funeral reliefs. The hound of the Common Era pendant stands between life and death, Tilley explains, serving as a symbol of fidelity and memory.

“The Romans just weren’t cat people. They loved their dogs for loyalty and faithfulness,” she says. “I remember seeing a Roman grave marker for a dog that said, ‘I buried you here with my hands just as I brought you home in my arms 10 years ago,’ and I really loved that and wanted to honor it.”

For jewelry-making material, Tilley admits she initially avoided 14k gold—instead working mostly in gold vermeil—but she now sees it as essential in her designs and says that about 80% of her jewelry is made from solid gold. With gold, she doesn’t have to hold as much inventory: The solid gold jewelry pieces are made to order, so she creates one as a prototype and photographs it for the Common Era website.

The rest of her business plan? “I don’t want to grow exponentially. I don’t want to hire people. I want to feel inspired and do things that I love without that pressure. I want to make just enough to pay the rent,” Tilley says.

And maybe take a family trip to Paris now and again.

Top: The Orphic tablet ($1,500), one of five 14k gold pendants in the Common Era’s new collection inspired by fragments of historic relics (photos courtesy of Common Era)