Crafts – Necromantic

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Precious Weapons: Jewelry by Ossia Obscure

Dublin-based Ossia Obscure handcrafts beautiful pieces of jewelry, taking the shapes of medieval and ancient weapons, as well as forms in nature and symbols of magic. Among these designs there is a witch’s broomstick, Nordic runes, a cat skull, a pomegranate, teeth and bones, chalices, Celtic battleaxes, and a spiked mace. Saoirse at Ossia Obscure creates new versions of these artifacts, drawing inspiration from fantasy, Gothic imagery, and medieval cultures. Fancifully designed and meticulously crafted, these miniature tools and weapons are each a unique marvel. I love the little details on them, the textures and irregularities. Although they depict brutal and crude objects, I feel that they have a wonderfully quaint, almost friendly look to them.

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Dolls by DD-Anne

The incredible ball-jointed dolls of DD-Anne express strength through fragility. Exquisite and ethereal, long-limbed, pure, they exude a special grace, an elegance touched with tragedy. There is an allegorical quality to them, illustrating poetic ideas in a three-dimensional and miniature form.

In her Alice in Underland series, she reconceptualizes the Queen of Hearts in a bold and marvelous way, taking inspiration from the Venus flytrap. The clothes and shoes for these little incarnations of the Victorian tale are sculptural and astonishing in their level of detail.

Meticulously crafted, DD-Anne’s dolls are delicate, beautiful, and thought-provoking. Her sewing skills and sense of design are formidable, resulting in creations that are wonderfully expressive and truly memorable. Lovely and visionary, these dolls embody an inner drama with splendor and clarity.

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Morgaine Faye’s Armory

The Armory Collection by jeweler Morgaine Faye features gauntlets, escutcheons, daggers, Lucerne hammers, morningstars, as well as an array of medieval weaponry and iconography including swifts and castle towers. The creation of these knightly pieces involves techniques traditionally used in armor- and weapons-making (forging, engraving, colored inlay, riveting, hidden kinetic components), forming a collection of charms, chains, pendants, and rings that can be layered and combined, giving them versatility as well as historical inspiration.

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The Bone Artist: Duy Ng

Duy Ng assembles incredible framed displays of skeletons of snakes, reptiles, and fish, including stingrays, pufferfish, seamoths, and also more fanciful specimens such as dinosaurs created from the bones of other creatures. Meticulously and elegantly arranged in their ornate vintage frames, lovingly articulated, these pieces are beautiful, pristine, and evocative, showing imagination as well as perfectionism.

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Needle Art by Rima Day

Rima Day is a fabric artist with a background in fashion and costuming. Her Hidden Desires series is a fascinating and exquisite project featuring delicate red threadwork on gossamer white corsets and gloves – accoutrements of a historic past which suppressed feminine passions. The bright threads resemble blood vessels exposed across the diaphanousness of the material; the violence and visceral nature of this visual impression contrasting against the purity suggested by the sheer whiteness of the garments. The ragged red hem of a pair of gloves vividly, almost shockingly visions forth torn veins or nerves. Beautiful and evocative, as well as slightly disturbing, these anatomical/sartorial pieces are carefully constructed productions of an accomplished seamstress exploring concepts through embroidery and textiles.

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Sempertarium

The dramatic and beautifully vivid jewelry of Saint Petersburg-based Sempertarium (by Olya Starvina) features Biblically accurate angels, bats, swords, and Victorian hands. Gothic cathedral arches are set in gemstones like glass, creating a brilliant, unique, and gorgeous effect. With their air of ecclesiastical splendor, Starvina’s jewels are both elegant and saturnine.

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Ecclesia

Ecclesia Jewelry evinces a godly geometry. Combining medieval themes and inspirations with modern aesthetics and natural forms, it is simultaneously minimalist and baroque. I love the pieces incorporating pearls (there is an ingenious, multi-stranded necklace of pearls, The Splitting of a Cell, in which the strings of pearls resemble spindle fibers during mitosis), and concentric lines reminiscent of organic shapes, and the sinuous, hypnotic forms of fire. There are rosaries, castles, chalices, tears, fascinating prismatic stones, and even a beautiful piece representing the milky eye of a blind dog called Eyes of a Blue Dog (or the Milk-Eyed Mender). Ecclesia has a highly distinctive style which evokes Catholic symbolism as well as the pure and intricate creations of nature.

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Embroidery by Lost Teeth

Lost Teeth/Natalia Czajkiewicz is a painter, musician, and textile artist based in Seattle. Her work is described as “meditations on grief, hope, memory, control, fear, and privilege in an increasingly dystopian society.” Natalia’s embroideries are minimalist and quaint, having a precious poignancy, a dark and childish quality.

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Bloodmilk: Katabasis

My perennial favorite jeweler, Bloodmilk, has come out with a new collection, Katabasis (from the Ancient Greek for “descent,” meaning a journey to the Underworld). The pieces are inspired by various elements of Hadean mythology, including Lethe, the river of forgetting, Hekate, the witch goddess who holds the keys to the Underworld, Orpheus who descended in order to bring back his doomed bride Eurydice, the terrible Morai who spin and cut the thread of fate for all mortals. Iridescent moonstones and onyx nest within intricate oxidized settings which seem to blend the ancient with the modern, the elegant sparrow claws and bat bones of Bloodmilk’s iconography forming cradles for the jewels.

Jessica’s statement for the Psychopomp ring is touching and lovely:

…the first iteration was meant to serve as a devotional ring to yourself, a declaration of accepting all of the sharp, inky, messy parts of yourself…your inability to mask at all times…your inability to say the right thing when you “need to”…that you can’t quite seem to feel good any day of the week… This first ring meant accepting these things, wearing a ring that meant belonging to all of the parts of yourself, saying “yes” to every little part, no matter how much society says “no.”

Many years later, this newer version of this ring means all of these things, and it also means you have permission to change too, you have permission to face these things and to chip away at any of them and any of them I missed, and you have support too…something to touch and turn on your finger to know you’re not alone, that I believe magic is real and you’re allowed to believe that too, in whatever way that word resonates for you.

It’s my wish that you’re not alone. That you feel safe and protected, whether it’s with this ring or not, whether it’s with the pages of a book, with the kinship of others…with knowing someone else feels the same way and is working on it too, is also just accepting the same things about themselves too.

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Otherworldly Gems by Omnia Studios

Omnia Studios fashions gorgeous, lavish, surreal and fantastic jewelry. Themes of the occult and mythology predominate, taking inspiration from a range of supernatural symbols and iconography, including cartomancy, Puritan winged skulls, the Moirae (Greek goddesses of fate), and Spiritualist planchettes. One of my favorite pieces is the absolutely incredible Charon’s Lantern Amulet, which represents the lamp of the river Styx’s ferryman, containing quartz crystals for illumination and held by two little ghostly hands. Bold, ornate, and baroque, these splendid jewels are perfect for darkly luxurious occasions or as everyday, beautifully odd statement pieces.

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