The use of natural materials in jewellery (Использование натуральных материалов в ювелирных украшениях)

Action is called for when change occurs, things that once looked innocent become evil or foolish. But an affronted cry always rises to the rooftops: «It won’t make a difference. .. so why do it?» This helpless and disingenuous evasion always covers two deep, important fears.

The first is the fear of economic harm: «I don’t have time to think about this; I have a business to run» or «My customers will only buy things with ivory or diamonds in them.» These are unacceptable excuses because pecuniary concerns cannot have precedence over moral ones. The second underlying fear is the fear of change. In our case, this fear is partly tied to the redefinition of the precious. Confronted with jewelry made of plastic, aluminum, bamboo, we cling to the traditionally precious.

We often deny responsibilities and evade duties; we ignore the obvious and disdain the subtle; we cite powerlessness or insignificance to justify our lack of involvement in the exercise of what is right and wrong. We forget that context is crucial, that once trivial things now loom large, that we hold the key to the survival of much that is important.

We have a responsibility to try to make a difference, if only by a gesture. Gestures turn insignificance into power. They change the worthless to the precious. This is important because we make precious things.

As artists, we have a feebler excuse than most for avoiding important gestures because what we do depends on understanding, deep down, the meanings, implications and truths of what we make. We must understand not only what we intend our work to mean, but what baggage and burdens our work takes on because of the context of our world.

Ivory is beautiful, but its beauty, today is a veneer on death and on the disappearance of a species. Ebony holds more than dark luster, it holds loss and profligacy and promises to take much with it. Gold and diamonds, no matter how beautiful, in their robber baron ostentation hold a medieval disregard for human dignity.

In some cases our responsibilities are clear. Ivory is wrong to use. In other cases the solutions are incomplete, frustrating. But the responsibility to try to do right is still there, to develop alternate sources and explore alternate materials, to redefine the precious and to educate ourselves and our patrons. The responsibility to do right is still there, to hash out our differences of opinion and pool our experiences.

And finally, the central responsibility is still there, not to ignore or deny the burdens of the things that we make and the things that we do.

The Madison Dialogue as a regulation instrument

In the modern world of jewelers there are some organizations that regulate the market of the jewellery materials. One of the most important and well-know organization is so called «The Madison Dialogue». It is a cross-sector initiative established to promote communication and information sharing among companies, civil society groups and others seeking to encourage best practices, sustainable economic development, and verified sources of responsible gold, diamonds and other minerals. Organizations, companies and individuals participate in the Madison Dialogue on a voluntary basis.

I think that in my work it’s important to give brief information about this organization in order to show the main principles of its activity.

The Madison Dialogue was launched at a meeting in New York (on Madison Avenue), in August 2006. Participants in that meeting included EARTHWORKS, WWF, Partnership Africa Canada, Tiffany & Co. Foundation, The Responsible Jewellery Council (RJC), the Diamond Development Initiative, Jewelers of America, Conservation International, Leber Jeweler and others.

Participants in the Madison Dialogue also take part in a number of other initiatives working on sustainable development, best practice, and certification or assurance in the sector. These include the Kimberley Process, the Diamond Development Initiative, and the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA), the Alliance for Responsible Mining (ARM), and the Responsible Jewellery Council (RJC), as well as other initiatives to specifically certify and track responsibly produced gold, diamonds and other minerals through the supply chain.

Several Madison Dialogue Working Groups also grew out of the first Madison Dialogue Summit, a live meeting held in October, 2007, in Washington, DC, among about 100 members of the Madison Dialogue. Working Groups are meeting separately in a number of areas, including diamonds, colored gemstones, precious metals, manufacturing, and recycling, in order to discuss the establishment of principles, standards, and assurance/certification systems in those discrete sectors. Some working groups are even devising drafts of principles or standards for their sectors.

It’s important to point out, however, that the Madison Dialogue was not set up to be an organization that itself finalizes standards or certifies companies, products or industry sectors. Madison Dialogue participants may look to a number of existing organizations working in these areas, including groups such as ARM, IRMA and RJC, or member organizations working under the umbrella of the Fair-trade Labeling Organizations (FLO) International, and FLO-CERT GBMH, among others.

Some of the above-named groups have joined or plan to join the International Social and Environmental Accreditation and Labeling (ISEAL) Alliance, an organization of leading voluntary international standard-setting and conformity assessment organizations that focus on social and environmental issues. ISEAL has published comprehensive guidance for good practice in voluntary social and environmental standard setting and certification (www.isealalliance.org).

The contemporary top-jewelers of the world

In this part of my assay I would like to focus on the work of the jewellery professionals. Jewelers that I would like to describe are well-know all over the world. Their names are brads that imply quality of their pieces of art and responsibility of the materials.

I would like to present in my work only three names that in my opinion can give more or less complete picture of contemporary stage of fashion and technological development in jewellery.

Melissa Joy Manning

Melissa Joy Manning is well-known American jewellery designer. She is committed to operate in a manner that promotes socially responsible sourcing and manufacturing and minimizes environmental impact.

Challenging retailers and producers to be more aware of the impact that their products have on the environment and communities is ultimately what will drive real industry change.

Melissa Joy Manning has received Kimberley Process documentation from some of key diamond suppliers, and continues to seek documentation from all gemstone vendors with whom we work.

In addition to diamond sourcing, Melissa Joy Manning wants to ensure social responsibility throughout the entire jewelry making process, from mining and refining to jewelry manufacturing. We draw upon nature both for design inspiration and for the materials that her enterprise uses to create jewelry; therefore they think that is their responsibility and desire to be sensitive to our environmental impact. The jewelry industry relies heavily upon mining companies to generate raw materials for their products; unfortunately the mining process creates significant waste and contaminants, causing harm to the land and its inhabitants. Because of the negative impacts of metal mining, Melissa Joy Manning’s enterprise purchases 100% recycled metal. The refining processes employed by its metal supplier also create up to 75% fewer waste products than standard refining techniques.

Additionally M.J.M. employs strict guidelines within production facility to capture and recycle the maximum amount of our own metal scrap and waste. She has also undertaken efforts to make her workplace more environmentally friendly. Her concern recently initiated a Green Certification Process through Alameda County, where its headquarters are located. The certification process focuses on waste reduction and recycling, energy conservation, water conservation, and pollution prevention.

M.J.M. as a manager continues incorporating environmental practices in her own workplace, such as recycling paper and packaging materials, switching to permanent instead of temporary items (towels, dishes, etc.), and using energy-efficient light bulbs, all small changes that make a big difference over the long run.

Producing locally is one of the key ways that M.J.M. reduces environmental impact of her business, while simultaneously spurring economic development in the inner city. Melissa Joy Manning jewelry is hand made in Oakland, California by trained metal smiths earning a living, working wage. Her company offers full benefit and retirement packages, including company matched IRAs and financial literacy training. Melissa Joy Manning was recently named to Inc. Magazine’s Inner City 100 list, which honors the fastest growing companies operating in US «inner cities» .

Anthony Roussel

Award winning Artist and Designer, Anthony Roussel creates beautiful intricate sculptural jewellery inspired by the epic sweep of the British coastline and a passion for modern architecture.

Roussel applies delicate flowing lines and sweeping curves, meticulously layering sheets of wood into sinuous forms. His fascination with the repetitive linear patterns found within geological rock formations is echoed in his technique. Essentially he builds flat elements into fluid structures.

Although formally trained in traditional metalwork, he discovered his real love for materials in wood after being introduced to working with various species by a violin maker.

Roussel pushes jewellery as an Art form, seeing the body as a veritable canvas. The jewellery he creates function as sculptural objects as well as wearable pieces of body adornment in their own right.

As well as his work’s instantly recognizable aesthetic, Roussel quickly became known for his skilled marriage of new technologies with traditional materials and cutting-edge design. Through the form of 3D modeling software and digital production, he embraces avant-garde processes whilst still preserving hand craft and good workmanship. A challenging statement upon what is possible in progressive jewellery design.

Roussel is a conscientious maker whose work is bold in nature yet delicate in appearance. With the use of wood, he questions the traditional notions of preciousness, in using new technologies as a tool; he challenges existing perceptions of craft.

Sebastian Buescher

The primary reason Sebastian Buesher makes his work is because it engages him in a state of pure creativity, a very pleasurable state that allows him to travel far from the mundane, serious everyday world into a world where anything is possible and nothing has to make sense. He likes to imagine that what he makes is a form of complete, unnecessary nonsense. His jewellery is not made to be worn and things are taken out of their traditional environment and placed in a surreal and absurd landscape. His art is surrealistic one.

These pieces often exhibit irony and contradiction, resulting in work that tests humor and allows the mind of the viewer to make invisible connections, primarily through the recognition of common and everyday elements.

More recently Sebastian Buesher has been drawn to second hand materials, lost memories, history and death. There is something about the past that intrigues him completely, a fascination verging almost on obsession. It is not about knowing what happened, but more about the past being so far away and utterly unreachable. His philosophy is based on the statement that there is a great sadness in the past, not necessarily one based on bad memories, but on the simple fact that the past is buried somewhere within people, coated with numerous layers of experience. These concepts and ideas were explored in his most recent collection, entitled «White Limbo» — imaginary place for lost or forgotten things.

There also appears to be a formula in his work. Recently Mr. Buesher has come to the conclusion that there are three main ingredients in his work: experimentation, material and history. They are all linked and cover common ground, but can also exist separately.

Experimentation allows him to play with a material, technique or idea. This act of playing explores possibilities and opportunities.

The material can be part of the experimentation, but is also something he hunts for on a regular basis, whether in antique markets, supermarkets, eBay, rivers or forests. Sometimes the material, or object, is complete and Mr. Buesher has to do nothing more than use it as it is. Other instances make him dissect the object, looking for something Mr. Buesher hasn’t seen or something that feels meaningful.

A lot of these objects are about history, in other words time and experience. Things from the river have been tumbled and washed for maybe a thousand years, trees have grown over centuries and second hand materials have been used, perhaps stolen, lost or given away. This formula is then applied to Buesher’s ideas and somehow come together as a piece.

It is very interesting that Sebastian Buesher doesn’t really plan his pieces, they tend to just happen. He starts with an initial idea, like a blur. As he progresses, he looks at what excites him and what doesn’t. That’s why he does what he wants, but he doesn’t want to be bored. That’s the rule.

As every Artist, he wants to look at the finished piece and be inspired and moved to create more. He can get stuck, he can get bored with a piece and as an artist, but he will never be able to see what he is really making, as other people are.

Sebastian Buesher thinks that this work is his life. It has moved from a hobby to become his livelihood, passion, dreams and desires. He says ha continue it for as long as he will live.

Conclusions

The research that I have made shows the importance of attentive and careful attitude to the resources that people use in the jewellery. They have been using natural resources since Ancient times, but they haven’t thought about the harm from their extracting until the second half of the 20th century, when the ecological situation became catastrophical.

As a jeweler, I am quite interested in the history of jewellery, and connection between jewellery and the environment, and also their influence to each other. As I have shown it in the firs part of the work, people always prefer natural material to artificial ones. It’s normal situation, but nowadays the prices of mining and getting such materials sometimes are too high. A good example is a situation with ivory production and peal’s industry. Fewer people want to own such «cruel» jewellery as that made form ivory and pearls.

Gem mining, pearl farming, and coral harvesting raise a number of issues, including the following:

pollutants caused by gem cutting;

fuel and electricity consumption resulting from heat-treating gems;

use of chemicals for coloration, diffusion, and bleaching of gems;

irradiation hazards for operators, suppliers, manufacturers, retailers, and consumers;

pollution of bays and oceans through waste products from harvesting pearl oysters;

dragging nets along the seafloor for harvesting blue, red, and black corals;

killing elephants, seals, walruses, narwhals, and sea tortoises for horns, shells, and ivories.

Gold mining is also one of the most destroying industries all around the world. During the process of extracting and manufacturing gold a lot of water and land is polluted with mercury and cyanide. Gold mining jeopardizes the health of people and ecosystems. For example, production of a single simple wedding ring generates 20 tons of mine waste. Moreover gold mining also displaces communities, supplants traditional livelihoods, and jeopardizes nature preserves.

Nowadays some «anti-gold-mining» does exist, for example, «The No Dirty Gold Campaign» gives to an every person in the world an opportunity to become part of the global movement for responsible gold mining.

The same situation does in other spheres exist. Exotic woods are not sacred by themselves. But people take down one tree out of a thousand and burn the rest, in a habitat that harbors thousands of species and provides the air that we breathe is obscenely shortsighted. Is a hand turned bowl worth that price?

Gold and diamonds are not bad by themselves, but when they might come from South Africa, when the suppliers won’t specify their source, when they may stink of apartheid and slavery, well, that’s a heavy burden for a pair of earrings.

But in addition to placing burden into the things that we make, we must look at the burdens that our objects already bear.

There are also two luminous visions, neither metal nor stone, which have intoxicated us all — pearl and glass. Glass is a chronically produced jewel created by the fusion of substances in high temperatures. Pearls are produced by oyster to counteract an irritant within its shell, an organic jewel formed of the nacre with which the mollusk lines the inner surface of its shell.

Complete shells of other mollusks, or pieces cut from them, ivory from the elephant, coral and the fossil resin amber are other softly gleaming animal jewels.

The problems in social and economic aspects do exist in the diamond’s mining. They are connected with a concept of conflict or blood diamonds. These are diamonds that are sold to fund the unlawful and illegal wars of rebel groups seeking to overthrow internationally recognized governments.

There are a few regulations in this sphere, one of them is co called Kimberley Process. The goals of it are to document and track all rough diamonds entering a participating country to assure manufacturers, retailers and consumers that the diamonds they are purchasing are conflict-free. In order for a country to be a participant, they must ensure that:

1) any diamond originating from the country does not finance a rebel group or any entity seeking to overthrow a UN-recognized government;

2) every diamond is accompanied by a Kimberley Process Certificate;

3) no diamond is imported from or exported to a non-member country.

The Kimberley Process is currently the only real form of documentation and does not apply to cutting and polishing processes or to colored gemstones; it also focuses on what some consider to be the UN’s narrow definition of conflict-free that centers on funding of rebel wars, but ignores environmental and labor-related concerns. The industry also lacks a standard definition of what it means to be fair-trade or environmentally friendly. The Tiffany Foundation, charitable arm of Tiffany & Co, recently funded a study by TransFair on the feasibility of fair trade diamonds.

From another point of view, mining drives economic development in many of the world’s poorest regions. Ceasing to purchase gemstones and metals from these regions may actually deprive the workers and inhabitants of a key source of economic sustainability.

As we can see, there are a lot of problems which are connected with extracting, transferring and using natural materials in modern jewellery works. But it doesn’t mean that person truly interested in jewellery, a professional will disappointed with this problems.

Nowadays in the world we can find a lot of examples of jewelers that managed to cope with such problems. One of these persons is Melissa Joy Manning.

She works exclusively with US-based vendors; because the US is a participant country in the Kimberley Certification Process, diamonds are not allowed to be imported into the country unless they are documented to be Kimberley Certified Conflict Free Diamonds. However, this does not mean that all diamonds sold in the US are guaranteed to be conflict-free. Just as she encourages her customers to challenge her practices, she actively challenges her suppliers to provide documentation verifying the sources of stones.

Anthony Roussel and Sebastian Buesher are also world wide know cutting-edge jewelers that combine in their works natural materials and modern technologies. They are venture stars for other jewelers and I, personally, will follow them in my future work.

Bibliography

Amanda Mansell, Adorn New Jewellery, Laurence King Ltd, 2008.

Bates, Rob. The Quest for Fair Trade Diamonds. JCK April 2008: 60−64.

Beth Legg, Jewellery from Natural Materials, A & C Black Publishers Ltd, 2008.

Bradford E.D.S., Contemporary Jewellery and Silver Design, Heywood & Co, 1950.

Bryan Morton (Ed), The Preservation of Species: The Value of Biologic Diversity, Princeton University Press, 1986

Bryan Morton, Why Preserve Natural Variety?, 1987

Cartlidge, Barbara, Twentieth-Century Jewelry, Abrams, 1985.

Chuck Evans, Contemporary Design and Technique, Davis Publications Inc., U.S., 1983.

Cynthia Moss, Elephant Memories, William Morrow & Co., 1988

D. J. Decker and G.R. Goff (eds), Valuing Wildlife: Economic and social Perspectives, Westview Press, 1987.

Eugene Linden, «Last Stand for Africa’s Elephants,» Time, Feb. 20, 1987.

Hodjash S.I. Ancient Egyptian jewellery, Moscow, 2001.

Hughes Graham, A pictorial history of gems & jewellery, Oxford, 1978.

Hughes Graham, Modern Jewelry, Crown Publishers, 1963.

Keith A. Lewis Ethics of materials. Metalsmith, 1989.

Lindsay Van Gelder, «It's Not Nice to Mess with Mother Nature,» Ms., Jan/Feb 1989.

Maria Di Spirito, Designs for Beaded Jewellery Using Natural Materials, English translation copyright Search Press Limited, 2006.

Mary Battiata, «Poaching of Wildlife Called ‘Out of Control'» The Washington Post, November 3, 1998.

Peter Dormer and Ralph Turner, The New Jewelry, Thames and Hudson, 1985.

Philip Shabecoff, «Urgent Call from Wild to Boycott Ivory,» The New York Times, November 3, 1988.

R. L. DiSilvestro, «U.S. Demand for Carved Ivory Hastens African Elephants' End,» Audubon, may 1988.

Ralph Turner, Contemporary Jewelry, Van Nostrand Reinhold Co, 1976.

Roskin, Gary. Clear-Conscience Color. JCK April 2008: 66−70.

Shuster, William George. Cleaning up the Mines. JCK April 2008: 72−76.

Susan Griffin, Women & Nature: The Roaring Inside Her, Harper and Row, 1978.

ww.kimberleyprocess.com

www.alternatives.it.com

www.CAT.INIST.com

www.diamondfacts.org

www.ethicalmetalsmiths.org

www.madisondialogue.org

www.melissajoymanning.com

www.nodirtygold.org

www.responsiblejewellery.com

www.responsiblemining.net

www.sustainablejewelry.org

www.velvetdavinci.com

www.articlealley.com

www.fashionarea.com

http://www.thefashionablehousewife.com/09/2009/fall-2009;jewelry-trend-elephants/

http://www.thefashionablehousewife.com/09/2009/fall-2009;jewelry-trend-elephants/

www.newtraditionaljewellery.com

ww.kimberleyprocess.com

Keith A. Lewis Ethics of materials. Metalsmith, 1989.

www.melissajoymanning.com