ETRUSCAN
BUTTERFLY BRACELET
About the Kit...
During
the middle and latter part of the 1800's, there were major archaeological
projects all over the classical world, including Rome and the
Italian peninsula. The beauty and craftsmanship of Etruscan jewelry
had gone largely unnoticed and unacknowledged after 500 AD, until
this time. These archaeological projects, and the wealth of artifacts
and jewelry they uncovered, sparked the public's imagination,
triggering Revival Styles in architecture, art, fashion and jewelry.
Etruscan jewelry experience revival styles in the late 1800's,
the 1920's, the 1950's and the 1980's.
The
Butterfly Necklace pictured below is an Etruscan Revival Piece
from the 20th century. Like the pieces associated with all Revival
Styles, there was a tendency to copy original Etruscan jewelry
components, and not to contemporize them.
This
piece above is no exception. The gold butterfly components have
hammered out details (repousse). The necklace is an assemblage
of similar components, symmetrically arranged.
With my contemporized Butterfly Bracelet interpretation of this
Etruscan piece, I've used bead weaving techniques (brick stitch
and peyote stitch), some simple wire working and bead stringing
assembling. Here I work with components, their coloration and
dimensionality, and the arrangement of these components to create
a more contemporary stylistic sensibility. In the contemporized
vein, we want to add some sense of non-linearity, dimensionality,
more complex use of color, more intricate techniques, more sensitivity
to the body’s shape and movement.
In the Etruscan Butterfly Bracelet project...
Learning
Objectives:
-
Discussion and review, of the history of Etruscan and Roman jewelry
-
Discussion of the Design Process
-
Discussion of Design Elements – things you can manipulate
as a designer
-
Discussion of what “Contemporizing” means, and how
design elements may be manipulated to achieve a more contemporized
piece. Some differences between “contemporizing traditional
jewelry” and “revitalizing vintage jewelry”
- Discussion of what kinds of things we can do to contemporize
the traditional Etruscan butterfly necklace
-
Create a design-plan for a bracelet made with two bead-woven components
and one wire-worked component
-
Use brick-stitch to create simple butterfly components
-
Use tubular peyote to create a bezel setting, which in this project
I call a “shoe”, for a 10x14mm cabochon and with which
to use as a bracelet component
-
Use simple wire-wrapping technique to create a cloverleaf connector
and a figure 8 connector
-
Play with and evaluate ideas for assembling the bracelet components
into a successful and satisfying contemporized piece
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