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Black Sheep & Prodigal Sons: Jewelry by Derrick Cruz

Artist and designer Derrick Cruz creates necklaces, rings, pins, darkly beautiful modern objects, as well as curating shows, exhibits, and craft collaborations. He is the founder and creative director of one of my favorite (now defunct) online shops/collectives, Occulter.

I love his Scrimshaw series, which harks back to old nautical days (scrimshaw is the term for carving, engraving, and scrollwork done, historically, in ivory or bone, most often whalebone).

This wonderful piece was created by gathering abandoned honeycomb from honeybee hives that had suffered colony collapse, and then using the lost-wax casting technique to burn away the wax honeycomb and replace it with gold. “Inspired by the alarming mass disappearance of honeybees, The Abandoned Comb Amulet is defined by a solomonic dilemma: violently shatter and consume the object in order to remove its inner worth, or nurture the form and allow it to naturally reveal the treasure within.”

A New Hive was a group installation designed and organized by Cruz in New York City’s Meatpacking District, dedicated to the rapidly vanishing honeybees that form the theme and inspiration of its works.