Scrapllery

After reading Yuval Noah Harari’s book “Sapiens” I realized that we are absolutely capable of creating miracles and destroying everything at the same time.  And it seems that we had this talent since …forever. We humans are doing our best to drain Mother Earth. This is something undoubtable. We eat too much, we kill too many, we inject poisons into earth and at the same time we remove everything that can be useful to our lifestyle without thinking about the future.

Will all these natural resources be there tomorrow? How long does it take for them to refresh themselves? What if one day everything derived from earth comes to an end?

What will happen to us then? Probably it will be the end of our civilization. The one that I enjoy at this moment while I have central heating, electric power, internet and a computer to write all these sensitive thoughts about the future. And I just had a chocolate bar wrapped in a plastic package – that I threw in the recycle bin although I know that no one will recycle it. But what to do?

For the last year I went through a recycle and reuse mania not only in my everyday life but also in my art and work. This means that I struggled to produce the minimum waste and to reuse materials. My workshop’s trash bin becomes full every 4 to 5 weeks because there is not much to throw away.

With all these things in mind I started creating paper clay flowers almost a year ago. The paper clay I use is handmade from old newspapers or egg cups that I keep. It is a challenging material because of its texture that can make the sculpting procedure very tricky. But the moment it’s ready and dry you can do miracles with it. You can file it, carve it, drill it easily and it doesn’t break. The objects from paper clay are extremely lightweight and can be painted with every type of pigment.

And then there are all the silver scraps and dust that I keep when I make jewelry. I decided to use these pieces and make organic shapes such as twigs, leaves and thorns. These natural shapes are appealing to me and they give me the freedom to improvise. Most of the times the materials and their shapes lead me to the final design. I just listen to them and they take me where they desire.

The new conceptual jewelry collection of 2022 is again inspired by nature. I named it Scrapllery (from scrap and jewellery) and at the moment it consists of 3 pieces that are actually 4 (!). There is a necklace, a ring and an earring (ear cuff) that can be worn as a brooch too.

All pieces are designed and handmade by me with recycled silver and upcycled paper.