2023 Check out the video (uncut and unedited) of me in the workshop. It isn't very entertaining, but it can give you a glimpse into what goes into jewellery-making: lots of measuring, hammering, soldering, filing and polishing. Handmade pieces apart from the design and gem procurement process, have a lot of labour behind them. My task is to conceive the jewellery and find the gems around which everything is centred, I will leave the making to the experts.
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While wildly interesting, and a fairly recently-acquired obsession of mine, amber from Myanmar is a hotbed for controversy. Acquiring it puts money in the pocket of the Myanmar army that has illegitimately taken leadership of the country since February 2021. Members from the Society of Vertebrate Paleantology have decided that avoiding the handling of specimens acquired from Myanmar post-coup is a way of engaging in due diligence.
This opinion isn't held by all scientists as study and research does need to proceed. I admire the SVP's stance. I have very close friends that are journalists and natives of Kachin State who echo that all mining in the area is shrouded in secrecy and conflict. Researchers would do do well to do all they can do to not contribute, however minimally, to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the area. Seeking to create a unique view of an old topic, web designer and artist Nicholas Rougeaux decided to test his patience and in the process expand his skill base by taking on the task of restoring James Sowerby's illustrations of British as well as exotic minerology.
He concludes that it was no small feat creating a collage that included every last catalogued mineral from the 19th century volumes- of which there were seven- but it was, as he put it, a labour of love. I am so impressed by the work he put in over a span of four months. This illustrated compendium of minerals is stunning for those who are interested in minerology and for those who want to just feast their eyes alike. More on the technicalities of this project are on James' site c82.net This chaotic gem of a film chronicles the life of a stereotype Jewish jeweller, who jumps from one frying pan to the next until his final leap is unwittingly into the fire. It omits the glamour from the notion of what a jeweller does. In reality it's all smoke and mirrors; a stomach-churning amount of risk; relationships and contacts built on trust, patience and track record; and eating shit. The only thing that doesn't seem to be a problem for the endearing jeweller is his personal supply of comfort funds which he uses largely on others.
Attention is given to one particular gem, the mineraloid opal. And it's the white Wollo/Welo variety from Ethiopia even though in the movie the opalescence peering out of the matrix was closer to blue in colour. " They say you can see a whole universe in an opal" is a line I remember, as well as the opening and closing sequences, as they travel seemingly into the plasma of a stone. Something the film made mention of that I appreciated however brief: It showed and brought up the perilous lives of miners who, with one fell swoop, can lose limb or life digging in the darkness of petrified earth often unregulated, uninsured and for the most part, except when fortune-favoured, underrewarded. But not to give it all away... I think this dark 2019 comedy is well worth a watch whether or not you care about gems before they've made it to the lapidary ;) I was in the US in June and July and one of the places I visited was Colorado. While there I visited the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. It had a great interactive section for kids which I found entertaining too. But what really captured my attention, and the reason we went, was for the vast gem exhibit. The way the minerals were arranged in class eg: silicates, rather than the rock from which they occur eg: igneous, meant that I learnt something new from the onset. I don't have a real point of reference about that curatorial decision, but I have never encountered information about gemological minerals presented in such a fashion. And so I found it was well narrated but again,I haven't seen very many natural Science arrangements in other parts of the US or elsewhere.
What I found outdated was that some of the samples from my part of the world had not been afforded updated labels with regard to their provenance. Instead of labeling the samples Lepidolite, Descloizite and Dioptase as acquired from Namibia, they still said South West Africa. This is akin to calling Mozambique "Portuguese East Africa" or referring to Zimbabwe as "Rhodesia". This oversight disappointed me, especially because we know that at many junctures, geography intersects with politics. After having uprooted from Myanmar because of the political strife, my partner and I escaped to Thailand. To take off a little edge, we made our way to Phuket. Now people go to the island for sand and sea. Not saying that I didn't enjoy the beach time, but I prefer different sights and sounds. We found out that Phuket has a mining museum. It isn't the most finely curated collection but it was a lovely surprise, especially the sets that were created to hearken the past. Phuket started off a Sino-Portuguese settlement which was discovered to have a tin deposit which is what the mining at this site was dedicated to. I don't know enough about mining yet to appreciate the mechanics of the process they used back then, but I was drawn to the already excavated samples, although sadly very few of them were labelled. I spotted a malachite-azurite specimen if I gathered my gem factoids correctly.
This piece was inspired by the documentary "My Octopus Teacher" that won an Academy award not too long ago. The motif of the octopus eye slit inspired the celebration of its perfect, chiseled arc. All Wingkaba pieces are handmade.
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AuthorKwena whose brand Wingkaba is, was once trying to make a smooth transition into gemmology as a profession but has decided to just continue with her jewellery design activities. She writes about gem idiosyncracies as she delves deeper and deeper into the tandem art & science. |