Capitola Girl has a great collection of 21st Century jewelry inspired by our favourite invention, the computer. It’s a brutally simple idea – to transform keybords into designer wear.
Most of the best items are necklaces etc but she has some earrings too, and here’s the best from Etsy.
Time to reboot
'S'uper
I guess you could do this with any key, any keyboard. Beats the hell out of typing all the time.
Welcome to the weekend people, it’s Friday.
Was searching for weekend earrings to see if I could find anything and hit this great article from my favorite left-leaning paper.
It’s absurdly journalistic in that epic, don’t give a shit, fill the number of words before the deadline way.
Earrings are tantamount to sartiorial escapism. Put a pair on and you can transport your look somewhere else entirely with the minimum of fuss. A pair of dreamcatchers can take you (mentally) to a beach in Ibiza, while giant chandeliers can mutate a glass of rose at your local into cocktails in Cannes. They are real wardrobe powerbrokers -they can add some fizz to something staid or they can make a fussy look boderline OTT – in a good way that is.
So they can only mentally take me Ibiza. Not literally? Thanks for clarifying.
This kind of sums up my mood right now. Apologies to whoever drew this I downloaded it ages ago.
Hanging on a thread
Found this great jewellery maker Gwaan, thanks to Ze who has done some funky collaboration with them when she’s not rocking up the clubs.
Ze first; a shit-hot sexy bitch from Kuala-Lumpa who makes the kinda international electro-noise mayhem that sounds like someone just discovered Peaches.
Check it.
Gwaan next. A reggae-clash-electronica jewellery label from somewhere in Europe that’s producing some tight little numbers.
First up, and most inspired, an earlace! This is fucking cool. Your brain might bleed to begin with but stay with me. It’s gold and silver chains on gold triangles from ear to ear; it’s an earring crossed with a necklace, which is the kind of orgy I like.
Don't tug too hard
Next, some straight talking little badge earrings.
Jamaica, not South London
Make your ears bleed
And finally, something I’ve never worn but would love to – an earcuff. (Told you these people were good!) Imagine hooking this over your ear. Could use it as a weapon when the shit goes down!
Like I say, damn good stuff guys, well done! Me love me reggae an’ tings and now I gotta go skin up, bla.
You ever notice in movies and TV that no one ever goes to the toilet? Then again, they never fart, sneeze or pick their nose either. Still, a little cinema verite wouldn’t go amiss.
To rectify this glaring omission are some truly toilet earrings from Nerdy, pero trendy
Flushed away
This way, you can fashionably remind everyone that you too need to sit on the porcelain throne from time to time. Mmmmmmm, nice.
This got me thinking, and searching, and I found that these weren’t the only earrings inspired by that most private of moments. These are up there on the ugh scale, but have a certain revolting charm.
Wash your hands after wearing
You’ve heard of shit for brains, well now there’s shit for ears!
So I’m starting to focus on the designers in the fine fair city around me.
Here’s the first to feature – High Tea Jewelery. She claims to be a simple girl which is a bit disingenuous when you see her designs. I can only assume she’s referring to her taste in food.
Most of her stuff is a little too chintzy for me, but I imagine that the girls will love it. That’s part of the problem writing an earring blog from a boy’s perspective – I just can’t get too excited about some of the more frilly fancy items that look lovely on the ladies but I would just never wear.
These are some of her (sorry, don’t know your name) most recent items although it’s clear she’s been doing this, and doing it well
This item is rather special. Sold, tragically, but then like most things in life you gotta move fast or you lose it.
If Homer Simpson wore earrings...
I like these too… Sensing a food theme anyone?
My ears are freezing
These are very nice pearls, mainly ‘cos they are not spherical but a bit distorted. And who couldn’t love that adorable cute kitty? So nice!
Pearls before cats
One final set, pretty old, but that Pegasus is great. Of course, if I got it I’d probably want to remove the beads at the top (why can’t girls recognize that sometimes elegant simplicity is more beautiful than over the top sweetness!)
We have lift off
All in all though good job, pretty reasonable prices, well worth checking out.
These are nice.
Plastic trees makes easy-to-clean woods
You know what’s even nicer? You can make them yourselves.
All the instructions are at PhotoJojo who like taking photos and turning them into cool things. These seem pretty simple, a bit like shrinking crisp packets in the oven.
Oh I want these so much – little doll’s hand earrings! Super scary, super cute – would have been good for Halloween.
These fit my taste perfectly. Morbid and marvelous like a floating skull.
Sign language
Found here but no idea who made them.
So continuing my quest for the world’s best earrings from the world’s best museums, here’s a fabulous pair for The Smithsonian. I’ve never been there but it looks a visit – or two; it’s actually a collection of collection with over 19 museums under it’s umbrella!
Anyway, hidden somewhere in all of that are these – for which the word’s OMG might have been written. Big, fat, fuck-off diamonds with royal connections. These two large, pear-shaped diamond earrings weigh 14.25 and 20.34 carats respectively.
They were given to Marie Antoinette by Louis XVI and are said to have been taken from her when she was arrested fleeing the French Revolution. Amazing that they survived The Terror and ended up in the US via the Russian royalty and some rather rich Americans.
She was always the subtle sort
The Terror, so named because everyone was smiling laughing playing having heir heads chopped off was not a good time for an earring wearer. Partly because any signs of wealth led to accusations of being nobility and partly because once identified as such the general punishment was a swift decapitation which made it very hard to co-ordinate one’s outfit.
Often blamed for leading a culture of excess – and it’s hard to argue with that when you see these gargantuan baubles, defenders of the young Queen argue that she tried her best to minimize the culture of profligacy that threatened to topple the monarchy. Certainly an interesting parallel with the financial situation today although unfortunately we are too controlled, lied to and force-fed to ever rise up in revolution as the French did then.
Regardless of what really happened leading up to the revolution, Marie certainly knew how to face the final curtain in style.
With head intact
On the morning of 16 October 1793 a guard arrived to cut her hair and bind her hands behind her back. She was paraded through the streets of Paris for over an hour before reaching the guillotine.
The priest who had accompanied her whispered, “This is the moment, Madame, to arm yourself with courage.”
Marie Antoinette turned to look at him and smiled, “Courage? The moment when my troubles are going to end is not the moment when my courage is going to fail me.”
Legend states that her last words were “Monsieur, I ask your pardon. I did not do it on purpose,” spoken after she had stepped on the executioner’s foot.
At 12:15 on Wednesday, Marie Antoinette was executed. Her head was exhibited to a cheering crowd. Her body was then dumped in an unmarked grave. Fortunately her earrings live on.
So I’ve decided to start searching the world’s museums, looking for some ancient artifacts that have been dug out of the sand / mud /jungle.
Archeology is a fascinating subject don’t you think? The uncovering of the lost, the rediscovery of man through the abandoned, forgotten and buried. One thing we can be sure is that earrings were as popular then as they are now.
Here’s a classy little number from the British Museum, that great storehouse of the antiquities from around the world stolen liberated borrowed by the British on their colonial conquests. It’s hard to argue that some of these items should be returned to their rightful owners but as anyone who has ever been there will tell you, it is a magical place – a monument to the ingenuity, variety and excess of men and woman over thousands of years.
So, for your delectation we have some pretty ancient specimens. There are from ‘ancient’ Greece which is about 420-400 BC. Over two and a half thousand years old, and we call it ancient? Says alot about our perception of time given that evidence suggests this city was inhabited from around 3000 BC.
These were found buried in a grave in Eretria, a location mentioned by Homer as being one of the cities that sent ships to the Trojan War.
Sailing through time
Like alot of ancient ornaments there are much more to these than meets the eye.
The boats are decorated, front and back, with tightly packed filigree designs. In each of them is a siren – a mythical monster combining the body of a bird with a female head. These have a die-formed front and a flat back sheet. Sirens were known in Greek mythology for their irresistible song that lured sailors to death on the craggy rocks where they perched. Four cockleshell pendants, with die-formed fronts and backs, are suspended by chains from each earring. Cockleshells are used frequently in jewellery, and were associated with the goddess Aphrodite. The boats are attached to a large, two-tiered rosette, with traces of enamelling, probably originally green and blue, in the inner petals.
D. Williams, J. Ogden, Greek Gold: Jewellery of the Classical World, 1994
These boats are therefore a fair approximation of the type of craft used by these ancient pioneers. In an era when the other side of the world is a plane-ride away, we’ve lost the sense of wonder and mystery that existed but it’s clear from these gems that our long-forgotten ancestors were brave and bold people, and not afraid to show off their skills in some gloriously produced earrings.
