From a Plastic Table to Miranda Lambert: The Story Behind Mud Lowery's Crisco Buckle

Before the Famous Names, There Was Grandma

Lowery grew up in Cocoa, Florida, but his family’s roots run through North Carolina, where his father and grandparents were born. A member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, he remembers traveling back to visit family and attending powwows where his grandmother would purchase turquoise jewelry from vendors. Long before turquoise became a mainstay of modern Western fashion, it was simply something familiar, connected to family gatherings and the people selling their work.

“Back then it wasn’t like it is here in Texas or in like the Western industry where people are obsessed with turquoise jewelry and collect it and wear every chance they get,” he explains. For his grandmother, purchasing jewelry was as much about supporting the vendors as it was about collecting something beautiful.

But her greatest influence on Lowery had little to do with what she bought and everything to do with what she encouraged him to make. “Ever since I was little, though, the same grandma, if I wanted to paint or like the stages of wanting to paint, she’d always encourage that or like buy me paints.” 

When she discovered a bead shop near her home offering lessons, she invited him along. The two began taking classes together, learning to make simple beaded jewelry, an activity they continued for years.

Eventually, she decided he was ready for something bigger. Without much discussion, she signed him up for a booth at a local craft show. Lowery credits her with giving him more than an appreciation for art. 

So he taught himself. There were no formal jewelry-making classes or carefully mapped-out career plans, just a willingness to figure things out, often through trial and error. Lowery remembers how discouraging those early years could be. He could picture exactly what he wanted to create but didn’t yet have the skills to execute it. Supplies were expensive, and sometimes he would put everything away for a while, frustrated that the finished pieces weren’t matching the designs in his head.

The customers kept coming, too. What began as a side business to support his roping habit became so busy that he barely had time to rope anymore. By around 2015, Lowery says the income from his jewelry had become more important than what he was earning from his full-time job.

The hobby that once began as a way to pay the entry fees for roping had become the career.

Gifford reached out with a general seventies direction and considerable creative freedom. The assignment sounded simple enough, but the research was another story. “You can’t just like Google Crisco buckles from the seventies,” Lowery jokes. Rather than recreate the lettering on a vintage Crisco can, he began looking at typography from the era, sketching his own interpretation of what a seventies-inspired buckle might look like.

“I didn’t want to copy the actual Crisco can.”

He sent the design to Gifford for approval, got the green light, made the buckle, and shipped it off. Then, as often happens with projects of this scale, he went back to work. The shoot was confidential, and while he heard everything had gone well, he didn’t receive photographs or know exactly how the buckle would be used. Months passed. Then the promotional artwork began appearing.

“That’s the buckle I made like a year ago,” he remembers thinking.

The Crisco buckle was just one piece of a much larger creative collaboration. Over the past several months, Lowery has made additional jewelry for Lambert, including Texas-shaped stone rings, hoops, and pieces worn for editorial appearances, including Southern Living. His inspiration comes from an unlikely mix of sources: vintage country music red carpets, old magazine shoots, seventies typography, and the styling of icons like Dolly Parton.

He studies the way jewelry was paired with clothing, particularly how a look could feel cohesive without appearing overly coordinated. “I don’t want stuff to be too matchy matchy, but still look like they belong together.” 

The process is less about reproducing a specific vintage piece and more about absorbing the spirit of an era. 

“It’s never like you pull one photo that you come across and then you copy it. It’s more so it just builds up like this creativity inside you to start picturing what the pieces could end up being like.”

Although traditional turquoise jewelry remains part of Lowery’s foundation, his work has evolved considerably over the years. As he began collaborating with celebrity stylists, he realized that turquoise wasn’t always the obvious choice for a particular outfit or performance. Rather than abandon the material that had inspired him in the first place, he started experimenting with opals, moonstones, rhinestones, gold plating, and unexpected combinations that allowed him to incorporate turquoise without making every piece feel traditionally Western.

That evolution helped him achieve another longtime dream: designing for Carrie Underwood. Lowery had wanted to work with Underwood for years, but he recognized that her style wasn’t always rooted in the Western aesthetic most closely associated with turquoise jewelry. 

When her Denim & Rhinestones era arrived, he saw an opportunity. He created a custom bolo featuring her initials, along with turquoise earrings finished with rhinestone fringe. The earrings featured small turquoise studs rather than an overwhelming amount of the stone, exactly the kind of creative balance he’d been working toward.

That willingness to experiment is evident throughout his collection, particularly in his custom cowboy pendants. The cowboys have become some of his favorite pieces to create because each one can tell a different story. Some carry flowers. Others hold coffee cups. One customer even requested a cowboy carrying an old-fashioned lantern. She wasn’t sure it could be done. Lowery was willing to try.

“Yeah, I bet I could.”

It’s a simple response, but one that seems to sum up much of his career. An idea doesn’t have to come with a blueprint. Sometimes you just have to be willing to figure it out. 

His story is also a great reminder of the power of having someone believe in you, and the impact his grandmother's love had on his life and ultimately his career. 

Ask him about the star studded moments, and he doesn’t sound like someone who’s gotten used to them. He sounds like someone who remembers exactly where he started.

Back in Cocoa, Florida, his grandmother once signed him up for a craft show because she thought people might want to buy what he was making.

Turns out, she was onto something.