BottleTree Jewelry Designs specializes in making custom jewelry designs that incorporates personal family jewelry, found objects and recycled or upcycled jewelry to create a unique piece of personal wearable art Their history? The artistry? The expense? I have always loved jewelry. Even as a child, I loved to play with my grandmother’s jewelry—she had quite a collection and thought it was cute to
see a little boy all decked out with rings and bangles and ropes of beads. Her collection was comprised of what would now be thought of as high quality costume jewelry….1950′s-1970′s venitian and chezch glass, lucite, gold and silver plate over cheaper metal—usually copper or iron under plate. She had a whole cabinet full of the stuff. She used to wear it when she and my grandfather would go out dancing on weekend nights in New York. I started out as an artist with drawings, paintings and sculpture. Making jewelry began for me as a way to create unique, personal gifts for the women in my life…wearable art for people I love. At first, I bought a lot of beads—particularly faceted gemstone beads. These are not only beautiful, but for many people, certain gemstones carry sentimental or spiritual significance. As I worked with these stones, and gold and sterling silver wire, I found the expense of the materials had become somewhat of a barrier to my really getting creative with the look and style of a piece. And at the same time, searching for ever cheaper sources for my materials I learned a bit about the wholesale gem and precious metal business. I soon became deeply concerned about the human and environmental impact of mining these materials. So I began to work mostly in recycled stones and metals, becoming a bit of a collector of broken jewelry in the process. This led to an accumulation of vintage costume jewelry as well, since estate sales and such often package these items together and sell them in bulk. Often I would be working on a piece, and see a costume bit in my tray that would compliment it perfectly. But I would never use those, because they were not precious enough—they did not fit with the quality standards of my work. Then after a while I started to think about the environmental impact of plastic and mining, and I wondered….why are these materials “cheap”? I know that prices are mostly about relative scarcity—and plastic is plentiful compared to say, sapphires. But if the true costs of extraction, processing, production and transportation were included in their price, plated chains and lucite beads ought to cost a great deal more than they do. Leaching of mining chemicals into the ground, toxic dumping into water sources, the massive environmental impact of petroleum…..human rights abuses and exploitative employment practices involved in precious metals and gemstone mining….all these costs are not accounted for in the price of these items. They are what economists term “spillover” costs…external to the price. They are a flaw within the pricing system. Therefore, if the true cost were included, what we now consider cheap would not be cheap, which would lower demand and these things would become far more scarce, more…precious. I wanted to communicate the true nature of the “fake” jewelry…if it were priced as it should be, it would be just as rare and valueble…just as precious. Around the time these thoughts were swirling through my mind, I had a project—to create several dramatic necklace and earring sets for a photo shoot. As nearly anyone working on a deadline has experienced occasionally, sometimes you get down to the wire and find you are missing a critical element…I realized I was out of gold chain the night before the shoot itself. I remembered my costume jewelry boxes, and began searching in them for chain to use. I found lots of plated chain, some with lovely uniquely shaped links…and some really unusual beads as well. So I just began to put them all together. I was so excited to finally use these materials in my art…many of them are beautiful and unusual shapes and colors and textures. Rather than focusing on traditonal patterns and spacing, I just put the elements together sculpturally, each set unique to the model it was intended for, though all three sets held common elements for the theme of the shoot. And the results were beautiful and unusual as well. The pieces for the photo essay were a hit, and I began to really explore this new layer of possiblity, making a new piece nearly every day. I was inspired. Thus evolved the LYRA line of jewelry, named after the heroine from a steampunk novel my daughter particularly liked. The pieces include anything I find lovely and fitting for that particular item–mostly recycled metals, both solid and plated, semi-precious gemstones, glass, pearls and lucite beads….from a multitude of sources. They are asymetrical, but balanced, and incorporate many different elements. Most of my pieces hold a lot of history, which I feel gives them weight and authenticity not found in commmercially produced jewelry. My favorite way to work is to make an item or set for a particular woman, and ideally to include parts of jewelry that she has some emotional attachment to but does not wear, maybe broken or inherited pieces. While I love to interview my clients in person when possible, I can work from photographs as well. Bottle Tree jewelry is personal and handmade. Each piece is precious and unique as the woman who wears it.
