SOUTH AMERICAN HANDCRAFTED JEWELRY INSPIRED BY THE ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICAN METAL ART TRADITION
Pre-hispanic cultures from South America like the Moches, the Chimus and the Incas
made sophisticated gold, silver, cooper and bronze ornaments of admirable beauty, creating an endless universe of meaningful symbols and, figurative and abstract designs that expressed a profoundly harmonic cosmogony.
After Spanish conquest, this art has become influenced by ancient European and ancestral Arab metal art and jewelry tradition.
In South America, metal art and jewelry maintain as a popular tradition in the villages and towns, and also between traveling artisans and metal artists that spread this expression through other countries.
These series of explorations and meditations were inspired by contemporary traditional South American metal handicraft seen in my travels around Peru and Brazil.
Materials:
Cooper: Used for making ornaments and tools since the ancient Egyptian times.
Alpaca: ("nickel German silver"), an alloy of bronze (cooper with zinc) and nickel developed in medieval Germany
It´s been used for jewelry in Hispanic countries especially in Peru and Argentina during XVI and XVII centuries.
Nowadays its use has spread all around South America.
Brazilian semi precious stones: like rose, transparent, green quartz, amazonita, red jade, amatist, fire agatha.
The ancestral technique used is called "filigree" and consists in twisted and hammered threads joint together to design figures and to form objects.
Each piece has her own personality and meaning.
Experience them!
Enjoy it!
Serpente Emplumada
