There's making jewelry and then there's designing jewelry.
Making jewelry in 2022 combines learning the ancient techniques and partnering it with modern tools to bring your vision to life. That's the quick summation of making jewelry.
To design it, is something entirely different. Just like when you create anything else, you need to have a source of inspiration - a creative nucleus. This isn't necessarily a physical object. Sure, it could be the sight of a beautiful garden or an ancient construction, weathered by time that spurs a passion to create a piece of jewelry that embodies that.
But it could also be an experience. The truth is, much of my Geometric Fixation Collection came out of a deeply emotional and raw time. It wasn't born of external inspiration, it was all internal. The pieces were drawn and sketched because those shapes juxtaposed comforted me and drew me to an aesthetic theme. Before I knew it, I had a collection.
My PRIDE collection, on the other hand, was created from symbolism and celebratory themes that already existed. I interpreted, with exacting specificity, the end product I wanted to make and produced meaningful pieces to honor what I felt needed another platform.
Similarly, by Buried Treasure Collection was imagined because of a love of ancient aesthetics and organic textures that I wished to have modernized. The pieces in this collection were sketched and then carved in wax to ensure the ancient and hand-made touch that was paramount in creating the elements I wanted in this collection.
Designing jewelry is simply the ability to take something internal, external, or abstract, and distill it down to elements that you combine in your unique way to produce a final product. The veins that run through a leaf, the ripples in a pond, the dancing twigs on a willow tree - these are all elements that I've used to create pieces in my Secret Garden Collection.
Once you pull your inspiration, gather your pencils and clear off the table. Start sketching. Develop a physical vision of your imagined piece. Then, if you're feeling up to that making jewelry challenge, grab some jeweler's wax and try your hand. Good luck and happy designing.
Xx,
Lily