Constellations Necklace by Estyn Hulbert

My first encounter with working with small beads was as a child in summer camp, and I find that that first encounter (think tiny beads spilling everywhere) can color my desire to even consider looking at works using beads and small stones as the primary medium. Nonetheless, I was absolutely stopped in my tracks when I was introduced to Estyn Hulbert and her breathtaking pieces at the Philadelphia Buyers Market show in February.

While she is an established professional in her field, Hulbert is a new artist with Artful Home. She works with tiny freshwater pearls and turquoise, the size of tiny glass beads but far more precious, steel wire and gold chain, taking the most delicate of elements and fashioning them into dramatic and elegant jewelry.

When building a piece of jewelry from pearls and wire, Estyn Hulbert describes the process as working with single units, adding and subtracting them to create shapes, the materials providing a palette of textures and contrasts. She thinks in terms of the architecture of a piece, striving for structural integrity and a seamlessness between the material and the form.

I was fortunate enough to see her pieces again at our recent photo shoot for the Fall Artful Home catalogs. The on-model photo above gives you a sense of the scale and refined drama of both the Constellation Necklace.

Constellations Necklace by Estyn Hulbert

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 7:15 am and is filed under Jewelry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can also leave a response.