Sometimes you just feel the urge to create something different, maybe on a larger scale than you have made before. So it was with this “necklace”. I have been making jewelry for years using vintage pieces and found objects but I felt like making something that was really big to hang on a wall as decoration or to make a statement. Something not really wearable as such.
I had been given these gorgeous wooden beads, they reminded me of teeth or claws that you sometimes find in tribal pieces. This piece started by attaching them to a metal ring that I had covered. Like most of my work I start out with a general idea and as i work it develops and grows and starts to take on it’s own form and identity. The elements tend to get attracted to the piece. Like the shells and beads used. I imagined a tribe that lived in nature and used the things that they found in their vicinity. It started to take on a sacredness and reverence all of its own.
Making things by hand from things that you have is a very particular skill. In some ways it is limiting but it also means that you have to get very inventive with what you do have. I like the hand made-ness of tribal objects, it gives them a certain quality that is unique to that object. You imbue that object with your thoughts your creativity, your inventiveness. With machine made objects that is what is missing and to me that makes them of little value, a throw away item. But after hours and hours of work making something by hand it has value, it becomes an heirloom a thing to be passed down, treasured.
This necklace ” Sacred Ceremony” is not a copy of something I have seen. I actually thought maybe I had seen something and been inspired but after consulting many books on tribal jewelry I found that this was my creation. But certainly inspired by the many tribal artists who make things to adorn themselves or that have meaning for them. It took me many many hours of work, knotting and sewing and threading, deciding where each shell or bead would be placed. That made it a sacred piece for me.
