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Generations
This Mothers Day I had two custom orders for pieces that spanned three generations. The first was a bracelet from a daughter to her mother. It was an honor to work on this piece. I keep wanting to find words to describe it and keep coming up short. “Special” doesn’t do it justice. Instead, I’ll give you the backstory. A friend from high school asked if I could create a bracelet for her mother. My friend’s grandmother passed away last year. Her favorite hymn was “It is Well With My Soul,” and her favorite flower was African violet. I, too, love that hymn, and I sometimes imagine what it would be like to be the father who wrote those words. African violets are not a plant I have worked with before, primarily due to their high moisture content. It happened to be that mine were in bloom, so I was able to collect and successfully dry the flowers for the bracelet. The result was a brass cuff bracelet. I cannot get enough of the curls in thick metal and am pleased with proportions. The only real trouble was the curvature and resin setting. I cast this piece at least eight times, and it still did not cooperate. A custom mold might be necessary to work with items that are not flat. Here is the end result.
The next intergenerational Mother’s Day gift was a set of three necklaces. This was from a mother to her daughter and her granddaughters. The daughter is a classmate from college–another similarity in the theme of these gifts. We knew the girls should have a simpler style with their mother’s necklace containing more detail. I created three brass necklaces. I wanted to draw connections between them in sets of two, so that traits would be shared equally, as they would ideally be in their relationships–a mother and daughter share differently than between sisters. For mom, it was a white ash leaf, collected from our college campus. It was set in a brass frame with Russian filigree fine silver embellishment and accented by semiprecious gemstones. One daughter received a white oak necklace, the other a pin oak.
