Honoring Remains Neckpiece
(or in this case, exalting remains)
[sterling, 22 karat gold, chrysoprase, green quartz, Idaho mule deer antler]
It makes your face look like this when it’s hanging around your neck and over your heart.
Let me just say,
I love this piece.
I wasn’t sure of the idea while building it.
Bit by bit, it came together so beautifully, so organically…right now, it sits beside me at my office desk because I know if I let it out of my sight, it will haunt me like a gentle, long limbed ghost. So I’m staying close. Real close.
When I set the last stone in this piece, I took it to my friend Amy, because I had to show it to someone.
I put it around my neck and drove across town.
As I drove, I could feel strength and light and fleetness welling up in me.
When I strung it around my friend’s neck, she felt the same way.
I view nature as: joyful, creative, perfectly constructed, complex, intertwined, dreamed up by Light Goodness & Perfect Love, holy, beautiful, freeing, serene, quiet…
While it can be violent, snarling, biting, heaving and disastrous…this piece holds the tranquil and beautiful parts of nature. The parts of nature that are restorative, healing, kind…
This piece is built of enduring components,
but also,
of something eternal
and hopeful.
It is stalwart.
It will not be spooked.
It stands strong and affirms lightness of being.
Mercy.
The rhythm of bare feet on a dirt path…
…and this path leads home.
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I’ve been wanting to tell you for some time, if you are a metalsmith and you don’t know much about cold connections you need to get a copy of Susan Lenart’s book:
Not only will you support her by claiming a copy of this book (and she is so wonderful….so wonderful in person), but you’ll have the cold connection bible in your studio and it might change your craft.
I cannot recommend it enough.
It has taught me so much — pinned settings are the least of my learnings.
Truly.
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I must add here, before this post grows old and cold,
that one of the reasons I like working with antlers is because I believe they are hugely symbolic:
Every year, a mule deer buck grows his antlers.
Each year he sheds them, simply drops them in a sage brush on the side of a mountain after they’ve been used up and bashed to bits in the rut. Then he grows a new set, a new, pristine set. He carries his new rack until it is rendered useless once more and so the cycle continues.
Antlers are about shedding, decay, regeneration, growth…
which I recently talked a bit about over here.
A bone or antler or horn carries the memory of a life (and perhaps death too) the same way a sheet of sterling carries my heartbeat due to arranged molecules and impacted crystal lattice.
Likewise, on some small scale, we’re all carrying our story and the stories of others in our own bones — the vibrations of broken hearts calling out for hope. The musical joy of a glad soul, drumming like it’s a timpani! Whether it’s a story of light or darkness, I think all the carrying we do — the shedding [the memory of our bones], the regeneration — is a beautiful thing.
Such a beautiful thing.
_____________________________
I must add here, before this post grows old and cold,
that one of the reasons I like working with antlers is because I believe they are hugely symbolic:
Every year, a mule deer buck grows his antlers.
Each year he sheds them, simply drops them in a sage brush on the side of a mountain after they’ve been used up and bashed to bits in the rut. Then he grows a new set, a new, pristine set. He carries his new rack until it is rendered useless once more and so the cycle continues.
Antlers are about shedding, decay, regeneration, growth…
which I recently talked a bit about over here.
A bone or antler or horn carries the memory of a life (and perhaps death too) the same way a sheet of sterling carries my heartbeat due to arranged molecules and impacted crystal lattice.
Likewise, on some small scale, we’re all carrying our story and the stories of others in our own bones — the vibrations of broken hearts calling out for hope. The musical joy of a glad soul, drumming like it’s a timpani! Whether it’s a story of light or darkness, I think all the carrying we do — the shedding [the memory of our bones], the regeneration — is a beautiful thing.
Such a beautiful thing.
