Marcia Poirier is a Yankee-born descendant of the Acadians, the French settlers who in the late 1600s came to inhabit the Atlantic shores of what is now known as Canada.

    Creative since her youth, Marcia began her Quahog shell jewelry by chance. While spending a day in her favorite activity of beachcombing, she spotted the shape of a heart in the coloring of a shell she plucked from a beach in New Brunswick, Canada. With only the crude tools at hand, she carved it out and wore it as a pendant. Requests from others for pieces of their own led to a four-year search for better processes to sculpt the rock-hard shell.

  Only later did Marcia learn that she was making “Wampum”, and that it was an all-but-lost art dating back hundreds of years.

  Today, Marcia shares her love of shells with others through sales of her Wampum jewelry - - - which now include designs in both Quahog and Conch shell - - - while continuously designing new and ever-more-stunning pieces.