Crafts – Necromantic

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Spiked Relics by Laura Benson

Laura Benson is a remarkable multidisciplinary artist and jewelry-maker. Her illustrations remind me so dearly of medieval art, with their strange little creatures, demons, and religious iconography. Her work is charming, disturbing, with a sense of sacred yet accessible mystery. I love the soldered frames and little pendants holding images of strange import. Surreal and metaphorical, they are imbued with both personal and mythic meaning.

Laura is led by “numinal curiosity… Melding found materials such as wooden clock parts, old book pages, antique charms, wooden textile stamps with processes such as printmaking, spun cotton, metalcasting and soldering…I create scenes and creatures and sentiments which rely upon the compositing effect of intuitive decision-making.” She is particularly focused on “iconography from an epoch of history in which the unknown was a grand and living Thing…”

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Swan Bride, Wolf Maiden, and Mother House: The Art Dolls of Pantovola

Netherlands-based Pantovola creates the most exquisite dolls and fabric sculptures, of which I’ve never quite seen the like. These marvels of textile art are highly creative, expressive, and melancholy, filled with such a wistful whimsicality. Her teapot ghosts are precious and endearing, and I discovered her through them – but her whole body of work is extremely impressive and extensive. While remaining cohesive and adhering to a singular vision and bearing the unmistakable stamp of the artist, Pantovola dolls display a rich range, exhaling qualities of fairytale daintiness, childlike fantasy, a perturbing, haunting surrealism, mournful tragedy, and emotional intensity. The extravagant imagination and eerie pensiveness behind these dolls speak to both nostalgia for the beautiful and trusting things of childhood, and adult loss with its intricate sufferings and woes. They seem to enshrine awestruck innocence as well as the baleful shedding of innocence, and to envision womanhood as a haunting.

Drawing heavily from childhood and the holy things therein, Pantovola dolls have a certain stylistic aspect of naivete, with the curious proportions of a child’s sensibility. They are, however, detailed to the nth degree, with their faces often possessing a subtly disturbing quality. They are visual metaphors and often frame things within their own torsos, such as bugs, stones, and letters. Pantovola uses antique fabrics and incorporates old objects, adding to the storied look of the dolls – the textures of time on them. With enchanting names like the Lady Amanita, Moth Sisters, Fantôme Misérable, and Sea Pearl Keeper, the dolls fascinate and draw you in with their air of sad whimsy and eccentric imaginativeness. In addition to being an immensely talented dollmaker and textile artist, Pantovola is also a painter whose style translates clearly across mediums.

Pantovola states: In my work I love to use time-worn materials such as antique textiles, handmade lace, and curious objects from my collection….My work touches on topics like beauty and decay, culture versus nature, the cycles of life and death, occultism and witchcraft, dreams, femininity, creativity and the re-enchantment of the world, with a strong reference to childhood memories and a certain nostalgia to it.

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Dark Botanical Jewelry from Dusky Meadow

Dusky Meadow is a handcrafted jewelry brand that takes inspiration from nature, history, and fairy tales. Unique and one of a kind, with a complicated yet raw look, Dominika’s pieces often incorporate images of butterflies and moths, vines and plants, toadstools, ribbon-like branches, moons, and mourning eyes. These wonderfully charming rings and necklaces are sinuous and fluid, but very ornate, like 19th-century household objects. The result is almost finicky, highly encrusted, at the same time having an unfinished naturalness and whimsical imprecision which gives a quality both ethereal and earthy to the pieces. Dominika’s influences range from Victorian accessories, anatomy, Eastern European folklore, Art Nouveau illustrations, to Gothic architecture and celestial bodies. I feel that moonstones are the perfect gem to set off her fantastical designs, and adore her imaginative envisioning of Baba Yaga’s hut with the stars and little gemstone moon in the sky behind it. The lavish creativity, whimsy, and preciousness of Dusky Meadow jewels make them some of the most coveted pieces I’ve lately laid my eyes upon.

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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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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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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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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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