JAPANESE GARDEN BRACELET
Experience the romance of leisurely meandering over the bridge, around the pond, and through the fragrant flower garden!
The Japanese Garden Bracelet is a fun project that students love. It is for students who have some familiarity with bead weaving. I had been experimenting with various strategies for bead weaving an “arch” shape (parabolic arch) which can keep its physical shape while the bracelet is worn. Not an easy task. It has required hours and hours of trial and error. The final choices here were influenced by the architecture of Antonio Gaudi, building a column in segments, and then forcing it into a tight arch configuration.
This project is also a good example of how you can use a natural setting for inspiration. This setting influences color choice, color positioning, as well as shape and its placement. These are the images which inspired the fragrance garden and the tea garden palettes of this piece.
In this fragrance garden landscape, we see the red moon bridge over a glistening pond of water. Commonly used Japanese garden plants that unfurl flowers include peony, chrysanthemum and, near water features, Japanese water iris. Flowering shrubs include azalea, camellia and hydrangea, all of which provide strong winter interest.
We feel that each plant, walkway, stone and other related elements have been deliberately placed, some shaped and others allowed to grow at will. Japanese gardens are designed to express their cultural values and philosophies. The gardens express the fragility of existence as well as time’s unstoppable advance. I believe the Japanese Fragrance Garden Bracelet captures all this.
It is important, I believe, for a contemporary piece of jewelry to have a sense of dimensionality, movement, and a strong use of color. In contemporary pieces, we also want some sense of the violation of straight lines and flat planes.
