Inspired by curiosity and passionate about celebrating and supporting the uniqueness of each individual, I create one of a kind jewelry pieces to foster self-expression
Just few years ago, in 2015, it has been discovered that 130,000 years ago, the Neandertals made jewelry, well before the appearance of modern humans in Europe, which dates about 48,000 years ago (Radovčić et al., 2015). Researchers believe that eagle talons found at the Neandertal site were manipulated to form a necklace or bracelet.
Before this discovery, it was thought that the oldest personal ornament were beads made from drilled ostrich egg shells tied on a string around the neck, found in Kenya and dated 40,000 years.
In 2008, on an excavation site in Siberia, a stone bracelet was found among some of the human remains. The bracelet is 40,000 years old and it was made using technology previously believed to have been nonexistent in the Paleolithic period.
It is believed that our ancestors used ornaments to reflect their identity (Smithsonian Institution). Today, jewelry is still used as a means of self-expression.
The figure below (Glăveanu, 2014) summarizes the eight inter-related functions of ornaments, organised around aesthetic/utilitarian and individual/social roles: to identify or locate, to communicate, to remind and organise, to guide attention, to express and individualise, to generate an experience, to beautify and to re-present. At the centre, the ninth function, present in all acts of ornamentation, is emergence: the capacity to generate, to create, to multiply, both a central characteristic and outcome of decoration.
Glăveanu challenges the vision of ornaments as trivial and mundane elements, aesthetics for the sake of aesthetics, and uncover their manifold value beyond aesthetics and visual delight.