moldy

What beautiful decay! Exactly what I had in mind. Would anybody wear this?

avm molds

So I started to make some molds and we`ll see how I fare with casting my pieces into them....

avm molds

AVM design

So I`ve been thinking about references to historical jewelry pieces for my designs, and read a little about historical pieces of various fashions. But really the mere fact that they still exist goes somewhat against my concept of making cheap jewelry decompose. Then i thought about the contrast of expensive diamond colliers (diamonds last forever!) and my decaying gelatin. Here I found though that a good number of those pieces were recycled throughout history to adapt to current styles, which makes sense considering all those precious materials. Really what I had in mind were those pretty yet inexpensive and meaningless pieces of fashion jewelry that are coveted by all, yet treasured by none. I thought if getting my girls to make some bead necklaces for me, but that was going a bit too far, and of course, I treasure all they ever produce....ooops, another topic.
Well, but I found a few of my own old fashion jewelry pieces, not worn in years but somehow dear to me, usually because I remember where they came from. And exactly the kind of stuff that I had in mind.

Necklace attempt 1

First attempt of gelatin necklace and the crumpled up result. It clearly needed more thought!

Well, here is the entire collection of wilting avms, all are quite beautiful, and what to choose?
Oh, and my eggxperiment turned our not so great in the end. This image is of a stage of semi dissolution of the eggshell, and i love the way the lemon juice has partly eroded the shell. It turned nasty after that though, I assume the acid entered the protective skin of the egg sack, and started curdling all the proteins in there. Not pretty. And really i was mostly interested in that skin but that seems impossible to get at without destruction of everything around it..... I just remembered, I left an easter egg that i had decorated with my daughter standing on the shelves for several years. At the end i threw it away and it had only the weight of the shell and the decoration, and I always wondered what actually had happened to its inner life.
Gayle Friedman told me today of a friend of hers who had been collecting foods for several decades, and left them out to dry and decay. That included things like potatoes and, yes, hamburgers! Sounds like I need to meet this guy, although this really sounds creepy!

Materials

I love the texture created by slicing a lime very thinly. The skin turns quite rigid with time and i am not sure how useful this is. The tea out side its bag, the bag itself is an interesting material, as it is very soft, but retains its strength, particularly when wet. That could come in useful....

Animal

A few beautiful animal materials, I do like the fish skin a lot. I will have to play with it though as it strikes me as quite brittle. I only had the little fish bone, which I placed on another gorgeous animal- tea leaves.

More Materials

Here are some materials that fit the vegetable category. They would I`m sure with time decompose, as they are all in the vegetable category. Beautiful, although a little too classic jewelry material.

Couldn`t resist the temptation of that experiment.

Materials

Well, here is a start...

I started a bug log about things that bother me in everyday life, and quickly came to the realization that most of those are not changeable by a single tool. If in a 4 person household I am the only one picking things up off the floor, I can either crack the whip over the other 3, or invent a tool like the one used to pick up the rubbish off the streets. That is not a tool I am interested in.

Then I wondered what bugged me in my everyday life as person making and selling jewelry. There is one thing that really bothers me about the field, and that is the overproduction of jewelry. The department stores are full to the brim with bling, and there is general abundance of wearables, that leaves one wondering, who is going to wear all this. And what happens at the end- do those many pieces get passed down from mother to daughter, is every piece worth to be given as a gift once the owner is done wearing it? I would say at best they end up at the salvation army stores.

I was once at a playground with my daughter and her friend where we found a huge bounty of thrown out custom jewelry that littered the little creek that was passing through. It all really looked quite beautiful! It had clearly been taken by a burglar who upon realizing the absence of any street value of his bounty, dumped it in this creek.

So I propose to investigate the possibility of making jewelry from materials that have an inbuilt shelf life. By this I mean not only biodegradability, I mean that the material will naturally decay after a certain period of time. That includes that they may be yummy enough to be eaten, or they may simply shrivel up beyond recognition, of be eaten by fungus..... we`ll see