Like most jewelry makers, beside looking around in nature for inspiration, I love browsing books or the internet for ideas in the magical world of vintage jewelry (vintage as in "something from the past of high quality, especially something representing the best of its kind"). The craftmanship is mesmerizing and invariably, I get inspired to create my interpretation of what I am looking at, challenging myself to produce a piece that reflects my craftmanship -at its best hopefully!.
Hence, few weeks ago, I got engrossed in admiring victorian brooches...
Brooches are not one of the most popular type of jewelry worn these days, which is probably one of the reason why I never made one. So I decided to make a brooch!
But first came for me the exercise of comparing and "analyzing" brooches of the victorian era, in order to grasp what makes their style so unique and intemporal.
I noted -at least in all the pictures I came across- the brooches were often oval shaped. This led me to divert to find the symbolic meaning of the "oval shape":
oval is the shape of egg, which is naturally synonymous of fertility hence abundance, creativity, increase, luck, new starts...
I settled to create an oval-shaped brooch with the main stone a feminine and romantic strawberry quartz. I used malachite beads as I loved the contrast between their strong opacity and the transparency of the quartz. The green of the malachite also represents plants and nature also synonymous of abundance...
Few cobalt blue seed beads added interesting "royal" blue touch of contrast to my brooch.
A nice exercise to reflect the style of Victorian age jewelry while remaining true to my own style :)
Thank you for reading and leaving a comment if you wish :)
Hence, few weeks ago, I got engrossed in admiring victorian brooches...
Brooches are not one of the most popular type of jewelry worn these days, which is probably one of the reason why I never made one. So I decided to make a brooch!
But first came for me the exercise of comparing and "analyzing" brooches of the victorian era, in order to grasp what makes their style so unique and intemporal.
I noted -at least in all the pictures I came across- the brooches were often oval shaped. This led me to divert to find the symbolic meaning of the "oval shape":
oval is the shape of egg, which is naturally synonymous of fertility hence abundance, creativity, increase, luck, new starts...
I settled to create an oval-shaped brooch with the main stone a feminine and romantic strawberry quartz. I used malachite beads as I loved the contrast between their strong opacity and the transparency of the quartz. The green of the malachite also represents plants and nature also synonymous of abundance...
Few cobalt blue seed beads added interesting "royal" blue touch of contrast to my brooch.
A nice exercise to reflect the style of Victorian age jewelry while remaining true to my own style :)
Thank you for reading and leaving a comment if you wish :)
