This all began in 2012, when I longed to make wearable works of art but found my feet planted in a ceramics studio.
Up to that point the potter’s wheel had been my go-to place for fleshing out the answers to life's questions. It grounded me, brought me calm and felt like home. But I still had a restless heart, and a nagging urge to stake out new creative territory. So in the process of seeking out a language that could pin-down and give form to the dozens of half-ideas swimming around inside me, I found myself revisiting a long-neglected love of my past…
Jewelry design has fascinated me as long as I can remember. There’s something mysterious and beguiling about this age-old human instinct to adorn. What is it that makes us want to decorate ourselves? What is it about jewelry that makes us feel so important, beautiful, powerful, secure?
I started to think that there must be some kind of hidden wisdom there. There had to be an ancient, enduring truth about human nature - who we really are - encapsulated in this tradition that has woven itself into every human civilization throughout time. The more I mused, the more I knew this was the thing to plunge myself into.
So with wet porcelain still caked under my fingernails and in the souls of my shoes, I embarked on the project that four years later I would finally give a name: Lusterbone.
Luster for an illuminating glimpse, the ephemeral, the brilliance of gold.
Bone for body, for strength, for the essential core of things.
While creating Lusterbone jewelry today, I dream about the hard-to-put-a-finger-on place where all those things meet. I think about geometry, balance and symbology. Triangles strike me as such a powerful shape - they have an undeniable sense of direction, a simple self-assuredness. Though rigid and grounded, they possess something of an otherworldly quality. A symbol of beyond.
Gold is another material that occupies that mysterious space for me. It can be elemental and rough, melted and polished to a blinding shine, or (in my case) dissolved and painted onto the most unlikely of surfaces: clay dug from the earth. I use a high-quality gold luster glaze on my designs that yields an 18-22 karat finish. This process, though admittedly painstaking, is nothing short of magic to me. As close to alchemy as this human may ever get. (Maybe.)
My creative process is private, meditative and precious, but I am still an object maker. I want to open up the intimate relationship I forge between myself and each one of these wearable works of art, and invite others to step into that sacred space. I make pieces that are profoundly meaningful to me, but that will also hopefully speak to the innate place in all of us that is touched by honesty and beauty.
Thank you, new friend, for spending time with me in this little corner of the world.
xo, MM
