a day ago
The original Cape Cod bracelet is famously hard to get. Now it's going online-only, ending a longtime tradition.
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Neighbors and customers complained. Some people figured out how to get around the ticket system. And the store couldn't keep up.
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'It was really clear we couldn't go on like this,' the owner, Rachel Carey-Harper, told the Globe. 'We're a tiny little business.'
The announcement by the shop last week, which cited 'intense dislike' for the ticketing system, prompted a flurry of reaction online. Out-of-towners who have dreamed of owning an original screwball were thrilled at the prospect of buying one remotely.
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But for longtime shoppers, the elusiveness was the point. Securing a ticket weeks in advance, going to Dennis, waiting in line, bringing enough cash, getting your wrist measured. It took effort. With no online catalog, Capegoers shopped each other's wrists, writing down the names of pieces so they could ask for them at the shop or in the 'onesie' line outside, where you could buy one specific piece of jewelry without even seeing it.
Copycats are widely available from other jewelers, but the mystique of securing an original was part of the adventure, longtime customers said. Many people never take them off.
'Everybody who has the real Eden bracelets, you feel like a special club,' O'Toole said. She brought her 8-year-old niece to get her first screwball bracelet last summer, after waking up at 5 a.m. to stalk the website for tickets in advance. She's been going to the Cape for 15 summers, and her whole family makes a day out of her Eden trip, going to the lake across the street on the day of the reservation.
Eden urges customers not to purchase the many copycats, noting that their bracelets are made in one-eighth increments to ensure a custom fit. The screwball name is trademarked, but the family tried and failed to secure a patent to stop others from copying the design, Carey-Harper said. The authentic bracelets come with a small dangling tag with an apple symbol on it.
On the shop's Facebook announcement about not reopening to in-person jewelry sales, hundreds of commenters left messages with memories of visiting Dennis to buy a bracelet with their mom, their daughter, their grandmother.
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'Rather than fighting those visiting the Cape for tickets we will be fighting resellers worldwide,' one commenter said. Another celebrated, writing she'd been waiting 'years' to buy a bracelet since she lives in Michigan.
It was never the owners' intention to make the bracelet so exclusive.
Once a hidden gem spread by word-of-mouth, the shop was overrun after 'The Bachelorette' contestant Chris Lambton gave one of the Eden bracelets to bachelorette Ali Fedotowsky as a gift on the hit ABC franchise in 2010.
'I pleaded with him not to give it,' said Carey-Harper, whose family knew the Lambtons from Dennis. 'But he didn't listen.'
Plenty of small businesses would be thrilled by the national exposure. But Carey-Harper said she almost closed the shop, one of several times it almost shuttered since it opened in the early 1960s. The store has never advertised, and Carey-Harper rarely does interviews, aiming to avoid publicity.
Eden Hand Arts in Dennis, Mass., won't sell jewelry in-person at its store this year, but will offer pottery and other art.
Courtesy of Eden Hand Arts
She wishes it was not so popular, and cringes at the overconsumption of it all.
'The money, the exposure, the TikTok videos, I could care less about all of that,' Carey-Harper said. 'Obviously you want to make enough to pay the bills, but beyond that, how much do you need?'
Carey-Harper estimates the demand compared to the supply is 'a thousand to one.' Since every bracelet is handmade by her husband and other jewelers, they would never be able to keep up — 'unless we turn it into a factory, which is not who we are.'
She also didn't want to address demand by jacking up the price of a $250 bracelet to $2,000. 'I want it to be accessible,' she said. 'I don't want our art to be elitist.'
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It's a 'misconception' to call Eden Hand Arts a jewelry store at all, Carey-Harper argues. The shop was started by her mother Eve Carey, a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, who specialized in Majolica earthenware pottery. She and her husband John, the designer of the screwball bracelet, bought the Dennis studio surrounded by a garden of apple trees in 1962 and named it Eden, a play on Eve's name. She died in 2005, and John in 2012.
A brochure from 1964 details the offerings from Eve and John Carey of Eden Hand Arts in Dennis, Mass.
Courtesy of Eden Hand Arts
A 1964 brochure references the couples' pottery, bird paintings, glass and wire sculptures, as well as jewelry. 'Note that it doesn't mention the Cape Cod Screwball bracelet,' Carey-Harper said.
Now, she hopes the 'garden,' as she calls it, will return to its roots. The store is currently closed, but will reopen in July just to sell pottery and other art, not jewelry. Repairs and exchanges for jewelry purchased in 2024 or earlier will also take place there, but not for jewelry purchased in the new online shop.
Moving to online sales is a huge leap for Eden. Eve Carey didn't even use a calculator, never mind a computer, preferring to do the shop's bookkeeping by hand. The store has never accepted credit cards.
Carey-Harper said she chose Etsy because an employee already knew how to run an Etsy shop. The jewelry pieces will still be handmade, so the quantity will be limited.
The prices are not yet set, but she acknowledged she will need to increase them because of Etsy's cut, and also because of the rising cost of gold and silver. Also on her to-do list: recording a video instructing customers how to properly measure their wrists.
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'Life is about change,' Carey-Harper, who is 74, said in response to disappointed customers. 'Change challenges us to find the joy of new adventures.
And that's what this is about. It's a new adventure.'
O'Toole says the online shop 'takes away the real appeal' of buying the jewelry. 'Not everybody had a real Eden bracelet, because you had to go through all this hassle and be down the Cape.'
But despite the end to her summer tradition, she said: 'I probably will buy one online. I don't think I'll be able to keep myself away.'
Steph Machado can be reached at
