Today, as solidarity and resistance jewellery comes back into fashion - more desirable and more outspoken than ever - it adorns the linked hands of a nascent international front, ever-more articulate and determined in its critique of injustice.  Gold and precious metals are among the earth’s most recycled materials.  Inscriptions of hope and resistance in the face of unchecked power have been washed from the surface of jewellery for centuries.  It is not difficult to find jewellery of resistance because it never existed - this series of articles has demonstrated that.  It is difficult to find jewellery of resistance because it has been recycled and rebranded by those who took the precious metals from the hands of those who opposed them...

Do you know which country was the first to win equal voting rights for women? That same country, through its extensive network of politically engaged women, had close ties to the labour and Women’s rights activist - patron of the Arts and Crafts in the U.S.A - Jane Addams. That country was Norway. And Norway, at the outbreak of World War Two, was invaded and occupied by the Nazis. The astonishing resistance that the Nazis encountered there - often led by women - not only led to a wave of contemporary study in the organisation of underground resistance movements… But also to the elevation of a simple everyday object… …a mainstay in the architecture of jewellery objects  

Looking in between the inscription and the engraving on the Modern Posy Ring.  This second instalment of Lost Owl’s History of Solidarity and Resistance Jewellery will follow short tales from the astonishing histories of the great people of Poland-Lithuania during the Modern Era. The Polish people resisted the great powers for over two centuries, until the collapse of the Soviet Union and the creation of Third Polish Republic in 1989.

There are some motifs that come up time and time again in art and jewellery. Ceres is one of them (Demeter to the Greeks). She is easy to spot, her symbols are wheat and grain (it’s where we get our word cereal), the sickle, the scythe and the plough. They symbolise prosperity, fertility, unity with the land and new beginnings.  You might know her as nurturing, life giving Grain Mother. Creative, nourishing and abundant. And you may know her of righteous and Earth-destroying rage when her daughter Proserpina is abducted by Pluto and taken to the underworld.   But has part of her story been hidden from view?

Part 2: How you can change history with cameos and intaglios... 

Part 1: Our first cities, our earliest civilisations - five thousand years ago -  found ways of penetrating hard stones with tools still harder that they would clearly and effectively leave a discernible mark - a mark of ownership or identity, of authenticity or of spiritual significance.  But one should perhaps think of Cameos, and even Intaglios - in their most exquisite forms - as sculptures, not engravings.

Whilst everyone’s talking about the theft of priceless royal jewels from the Louvré in Paris - which was, admittedly, very impressive and also opened up some valuable discussion around jewels and gems and European colonial ‘acquisitions’ - we thought we’d explore a few other notable jewellery robberies from years gone by… They may not include such famed jewels as the Marie Louise necklace (pictured right and presented by Napoleon to his second wife), the stories are, by their very nature, each as wild as the next. 

After two world wars, Modernism was reborn again. It was another chance. This is a story of the 20th century, of heaven and hell and how in the hands of a new generation of artists and jewellery-makers, great ideals were reflected in astonishing new approaches to metalwork - refracted across floating and luminous stones. And what, if anything, remains of these interwar and post-war jeweller-artists? "Perhaps what we should rehabilitate today is not beauty, but good craftsmanship: art as hard work. You have to study, to learn how to do it. Craftsmanship. That's what I admire today."

"When the Arts & Crafts Castrated William Morris" - Arts and Crafts. From conception it was a socialist movement, but ended up - to quote Art Historian Alan Crawford - “a bohemian gentleman’s club, smokey and exclusive” where “a narrow and tiresome aristocracy” was to be found “working with great skill for the very rich”. And moreover, “working women showed no interest”.  So how exactly did the Arts and Crafts - the New Love - castrate Mr Morris? Find out in our latest blog post. We take a deep dive into the movement and we find out how a language that may have begun in bohemian men’s socialist clubs (and echo chambers) was transformed into an international vehicle for the empowerment and liberation of working women.   

It evokes opulence and extravagance, but the claw is quite plainly mounted (in silver, sure but still), nothing too fancy. A contradiction. So who would have made this… worn this… and why?

  Episode 2: What follows is, in part, a concise biography of the life and works of Alessandro Castellani. It is also a brief account of the unification of Italy and some ideologies at play; ideologies which, while seemingly emancipatory, laid the groundwork for 20th century Italian and European fascism; ideologies which visibly fed back into the astonishing craftsmanship of Castellani.   

Episode 1: ROME, 1930: an Italian jeweller and businessman of great renown passes away. In accordance with his will, his family’s estate - extensive archives and research, and a formidable collection of jewellery and historical artefacts - is bequeathed to the Italian state...  But would the previous owners of the firm - Alfredo’s grandfather, (Fortunato Pio), his uncle, (Alessandro), and his father, (Augusto) - have turned in their graves at the thought?   …Or would they have made the same bequest?  

In the West and in the East, in spirituality and in the lab, the cosmos is within us.  Here, Cartier and Van Cleef, Edmond Halley and Jodie Foster (yes, Jodie Foster) come together as we remember: "We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself".  So come and star gaze. Watch as the cosmos reaches down to us and reemerges transformed into precious adornments, each one a story about our place in that awesome and humbling night sky. Enjoy the finale of Season 1 of the Starstuff Stories. Enjoy the Celestial Collection.

"Gold is the most precious of all commodities; gold constitutes treasure, and he who possesses it has all he needs in this world, has also the means of rescuing souls from purgatory, and restoring them to the enjoyment of paradise", said Christopher Columbus in a letter to the Catholic Monarchs of Spain. Let us follow Columbus, and others who came after him, deep into a blue-green world of legend and half-forgotten gods. But gold meant very different things to very different people: to the Europeans, what was scarce was valuable, gold was scarce, so gold was valuable. But to the Mesoamericans, what was scarce was meaningful; gold was scarce; so gold was meaningful. The Gold Collection is a search for meaning. The sun god follows, around the circle of the universe, the eternal serpent’s path through the cosmos. In this ancient world, meanings abound…

Cartier, Fabergé, Tiffany & Co; Spanish Monarchs, Napoleon Bonaparte, and British Colonies in southern Africa; and galaxy-sized fireworks displays in deep space... The first collection in "The Starstuff Stories" tells the tale of how an unremarkable discovery in a river in Colombia, not only inspired some of the most extraordinary jewellery-making in the last 150 years, but even led to profound questions about the universe itself...    The astronomer Carl Sagan famously said “The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself”.    Is jewellery, perhaps, one of the most elegant expressions of this knowing, of Sagan's 'cosmic introspection'?