Necklaces

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Voice

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I am grateful that I get to express myself freely in this world. It is a privilege that the women in my family earned and I inherited.

Voice Necklace.
Handmade with amethyst and recycled sterling silver.
Soon in my online shop.

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Marlies

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Meet Marlies Gelens. An artist and industrial designer who in 1999 migrated from The Netherlands to San Agustinillo, a tiny settlement on the Pacific coast of Mexico. Marlies and her (then) Dutch partner began to sell their homemade European-style bread to neighbors, and eventually set up the beloved restaurant, Apa Pan. Marlies remodeled the existing structure, designed the furniture, and baked the delicious bread that brought lines of grateful customers for years to come.

In 2016 Marlies left the coast and moved to San Sebastian Rio Hondo, a remote village on the Mountains of Oaxaca, to begin her dream of working with textiles. She had been making pillows with ribbon, but now she wanted to use cotton and wool to make ceremonial garments and work with local women. When she shared her vision with me last year, it became clear that she was the perfect person to inherit my mom’s textile raw materials.

As many of you know, my mother was an incredible textile artist. She was a master knitter who dyed her own yarns and designed one a of a kind sweaters. For decades, she worked with dozens of women from the neighboring towns to make fabulous knits that she would export to the United States, and sell in her boutique in the Bazaar Sábado, in Mexico City.

A year ago, as my mother struggled with the later stages of Alzheimer’s, I explained to her that her fabric, yarn, dyes, and tools would soon come into the hands of many women whose lives would be enriched by her gift. She understood, and was so excited that for months she kept asking about the beautiful dream of the women and the textiles.

Since then, Marlies continues to develop the vision and moving parts of her project. Here she is in Durango buying her first batch of merino wool from a local farmer. She will soon wash it and turn it into felted pieces, spun yarn and exquisite fabric.

The Setting Sun Necklace will ground and inspire her as she creates ceremonial attire for life’s most transcendent moments.

This was my mom at work, and some of her finished pieces.

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Rooted

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“Look at a tree, a flower, a plant. Let your awareness rest upon it. How still they are, how deeply rooted in Being. Allow nature to teach you stillness.”
— Eckhart Tolle

Rooted Necklace.
Handmade with amber, malachite and recycled sterling silver.
Available this Thursday in my online shop.

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Memory

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“If there ever comes a day when we can’t be together, keep me in your heart. I’ll stay there forever.”
— A. A. Milne

Memory Necklace.
Handmade with malachite and recycled sterling silver.
Soon in my online shop.

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Vital

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“Every time you follow your inner guidance, you feel more energy, increased power, a sense of spiritual aliveness.”
— Shakti Gawain

Vital Necklace.
Handmade with malachite and recycled sterling silver.
Soon in my online shop.

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Solitude

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“It is in solitude that we discover that being is more important than having and that we are worth more than the results of our efforts.
In solitude we discover that our life is not a possession to be defended but a gift to be shared.”
— Henri Nouwen

Lone Necklace.
Handmade with malachite and recycled sterling silver.
Soon in my online shop.

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Setting Sun

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“There is in all visible things... a hidden wholeness.”
— Thomas Merton

Setting Sun Necklace.
Handmade with amber, malachite and recycled sterling silver.
Soon in my online shop.

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Aligned

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“I am free, and always have been; free to accept my own reality, free to trust my perceptions, free to believe what makes me feel sane even if others call me crazy, free to disagree even if it means great loss, free to seek the way home until I find it.”
— Martha Beck

Aligned Necklace.
Handmade with malachite and recycled sterling silver.
Soon in my online shop.

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Confluence

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“In a life properly lived, you’re a river.”
— Jim Harrison

Confluence Necklace.
Handmade with labradorite and recycled sterling silver.
Available this Thursday in my online shop.

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Wild Geese

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“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.”
— Mary Oliver

Wild Geese Necklace.
Handmade with rose quartz and recycled sterling silver.
Next week in my online shop.

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Levity

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“The bad news is you’re falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is, there’s no ground”
— Chogyam Trungpa

Levity Necklace.
Handmade with prehnite and recycled sterling silver.
Soon in my online shop.

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Integrity

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“Peace is your home, integrity is the way to it, and everything you long for will meet you there.”
— Martha Beck

Integrity Necklace.
Handmade with tourmaline quartz and recycled sterling silver.
Soon in my online shop.

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Viva

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“I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.”
— Joseph Campbell

Viva Necklace.
Handmade with purple mohave turquoise and recycled sterling silver.
Soon in my online shop.

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Weightless

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“The wind of change, whatever it is, blows most freely through an open mind.”
— Katherine Whitehorn

Weightless Necklace.
Handmade with Peruvian blue opal and recycled sterling silver.
Soon in my online shop.

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Enliven

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“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
— Howard Thurman

Enlivened Necklace.
Handmade with phosphosiderite and recycled sterling silver.
Soon in my online shop.

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Wind

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“I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am.”
— Sylvia Plath

Wind Necklace.
Handmade with recycled sterling silver.
Soon in my online shop.