Adornment

As I wandered around, picking flowers in the little garden of the house in which I am staying I started thinking about why we adorn. Adorn our homes, our workspaces and ourselves. Of course, as a jewellery maker it is this latter type of adornment that fascinates me - and helps me make a living doing what I love … making adornments.

It is not a new thing apparently. The oldest jewellery discovered (so far) dates back 150,000 years. 32 perforated shell builds found in the Bizmoune Cave of Morrocco tells us that people have been wearing swag for a VERY long time. 20,000 years ago, a woman in Siberia was wearing an pendant fashioned from an elk tooth. How do we know that? Because scientists actually extracted DNA from the damn thing and were able to identify the wearer as female!

Still, while their is ample evidence to demonstrate that wearing jewellery has always been a thing, there is less concrete evidence about why we do it. Sometimes it is used for religious and cultural practices. Certainly over the years jewellery has become a symbol of status and oftentimes, wealth. However, that doesn’t explain all the warm fuzzy feelings a parent has when their kindy kid makes them a macaroni necklace now does it?

I think we adorn ourselves and our spaces because it gives us pleasure. Beautiful things, made or provided by Nature makes us feel good which is a super positive way to feel , right? So in the end adornment in the form of a posy of flowers or a piece of jewellery (or whatever floats your adornment boat) is conducive to our well-being.

Let’s celebrate that and adorn the crap out of everything - okay Minimalists, you get a pass - and enjoy the life-enhancing act of ADORNMENT.