About Dee: Jewelry Artisan

Denise Antil, known as Dee to her family and friends, was born and raised in Upstate New York, before traveling first to Newport, Rhode Island then eventually to Charleston, South Carolina to pursue a life in nursing and anesthesia. Marriage followed, as did a career opportunity which brought Dee and her husband to Fredericksburg.

Dee found out first hand that life has a way of throwing us curve balls when we least expect them. Her marriage ended soon after the move to Fredericksburg, followed shortly thereafter by her anesthesia career, the victim of a hearing disability which struck Dee quickly and without warning. However, as she found herself raising three young boys alone on a fixed income, Dee also found a silver lining in the storm clouds that hovered over her and her boys. She discovered she had both a talent and a great passion for creating beautiful, wearable art jewelry. She also found that her unwavering attention to detail, which served her so well in the operating room, had found a new and exciting purpose. The result was the creation of Dee Antil Designs and a line of wearable art which is as unique, as understated, and ultimately, as durable as the woman who creates it.

In her second career, Denise Antil has been transformed from a woman who made jewelry at her kitchen table between trips to the soccer field, into a highly respected jewelry maker on the east coast. Her jewelry is now in the private collections of notable people across the country, including ABC news anchor Robin Roberts and former Syracuse news anchor Maureen Green.


Dee is a three-term past President of Brush Strokes Gallery in Fredericksburg, where she was a member from 2006-2012. She is also a founding board member of Fredericksburg's nonprofit sculptural gallery, Artful Dimensions. More recently Dee was accepted and part of Fredericksburg's oldest art cooperative, Art First Gallery, for a time.