I've been on commercial shopping jobs before where I needed to secure jewelry to complete an ensemble. Sometimes the outfit had to be kept intentionally simple and just a little accent would be just enough icing on top without turning the dish into icing with a wee bit of cake. However, have you ever stood in front of a display at say anywhere from H&M to Macy's to Forever 21? Fruitless gobs of jewelry that may work but are largely forgetting in their trendiness and transient appeal. What they lacked was depth. The kind of depth you exhibit that makes you want to don a piece of jewelry due to its beauty, history, crafted quality and ability to just freakin' work in balancing with, not competing against, an outfit.
A few years ago I took to wearing coins from different countries layered around my neck. The inspiration was I just wanted to wear coins from countries I hoped to one day visit. I just thought the look was cool and not gaudy or overly aggressive. The 'seal the deal' factor was that I saw this as something I could wear everyday similar as to how a person dons keepsake or memento jewelry since the origins behind the coins spoke to me. In an enlightened way, they had depth that was personal to me. This depth without the grand hoopla, this depth with the strong yet diminutive bells and whistles is what immediately drew me into the jewelry on display from Pyrrha at the recent ENK Accessories Showcase in New York City.
Strong messages with a tinge of familiarity executed in an Old World way are the gists to the unique bracelets, cuffs, pendants, necklaces and rings offered by Pyrrha. What kind of messages? Some positive, some motivational, some mythical, some spiritual, some thought-provoking and all inspiring. All the jewelry is formed from old seals that were once used to convey subjects of letters, the emotional states and social standings of the senders of such letters in the forms of talismans, crests, creeds and other forms of iconography.
What's cool about Vancouver-based Pyrrha is their fixation on the seals remaining imperfect so that they keep a handmade Old World silversmith-crafted feel. This incidentally is quite similar to the natural state of the original seals themselves. The crude, hand-wrought, almost organic manner in which the seals are attached as links for a cuff, placed on the fronts of lockets, stamped onto rings and made with loops to attach to necklaces, keep an air of not just cool, but also of realism almost as though the jewelry was pulled out of some old buried treasure trunk. The seals, that capture idioms like "love conquers all", "carpe diem", "my life is a prayer", "follow your dreams" and "embrace change", offer empowerment in symbolism that compliments any outfit.
L to R: Taylor Lautner in Love & Friendship, Jeremy Renner in My Life is a Prayer and Jodie Foster in Love Truth
Check out the video below of the Old World magic behind the Pyrrha process then head on over to Pyrrha.com to peruse their vast collection of over 300 talisman seals and various jewelry pieces and discover which ones speak to you, where you're going, where you've been or just simply, what you'll be wearing!
0 comments:
Post a Comment