Buddha Mama joins Ashley Longshore Dallas pop-up, elevating jewels into collectibles

Ashley Longshore gave Buddha Mama a different kind of stage in Dallas, and Nancy Badia understood the point immediately. Placed inside Longshore’s monthlong residency at The Terminal at Katy Trail in Turtle Creek, the Miami jeweler’s three-day showing from April 9 to 11 turned one-of-a-kind rings, pendants and charms into objects meant to be viewed the way collectors view art: with authorship, scarcity and personal attachment.

It was Buddha Mama’s first collaboration of this kind, and the pairing made sense because both women build recognizable visual worlds. Buddha Mama works in 20k gold with hand-painted enamel, precious stones and gemstones, while Longshore’s paintings orbit pop culture, feminism, American consumerism and Hollywood glamour. The crossover was not a loose licensing exercise. Longshore invited Nancy Badia and her daughter and business partner Dakota Badia into the Dallas project, making the jewelry part of the artist’s own curatorial statement.

That distinction matters for buyers. A standard luxury launch can sell craftsmanship; an art-driven presentation adds provenance, narrative and the sense that a piece belongs in a collection rather than a shopping cart. Buddha Mama’s watermelon tourmaline and diamond butterfly pendant, inspired by Longshore’s artwork and owned by Badia herself, captured that idea neatly. It was not only a jewel with vivid material presence, but also a story about friendship, taste and shared authorship between two women-led brands.

The collaboration also pulled Buddha Mama’s origin story into sharper focus. Nancy Badia began by stringing beads at her kitchen table to raise money for her local Buddhist center, Zen Village, before building a fine-jewelry line grounded in Buddhist imagery, Eastern traditions, historical and contemporary talismans, and classic enamel work. That lineage gave the Dallas showing an added layer of credibility. These were not decorative objects borrowed for the weekend, but pieces from a house that has always tied adornment to meaning.

Longshore’s Dallas residency, which ran from April 1 to 27, also carried a philanthropic dimension, with a portion of art sales benefiting a scholarship at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. She debuted more than 40 works at The Terminal at Katy Trail, making the event feel less like a trunk show than a compact market for collectible culture. In that setting, Buddha Mama’s jewels did what the best art jewelry always does: they looked ready to be worn, and just as ready to be kept.