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Feminist Jewelry
1:55 AM Posted In feminist jewelry , jewelry , recycling , resources , weblinks Edit This 1 Comment »
Since I decided to relaunch my jewelry making business with new vigor, I have been intrigued with two ideas. The first – to make eco-friendly, recycled jewelry. Whether you believe in climate change or not, most people agree that everything we do impacts the environment. I feel that there are many small (and some big) things we can all do to help reduce this impact. I have been experimenting and researching various ways to explore this in my jewelry designs.Check out 'Recycled Jewelry: Idea Introduction."
The second idea came to me as I was thinking about the future of this proposed career of mine. I am minoring in Women's Studies - something I have been interested in (through perhaps not knowingly, or by that term) since my early middle school days and the more I learn, the more passion I gain for this important movement. I thought - I can make feminist jewelry. What the deuce does that mean? Well, to be honest, at first I didn't have a clue either. I have taken some time to explore and develop the thought: Feminist Jewelry is jewelry, which celebrates the power, beauty and equality of womankind.
I have lately had some ideas on how I might begin to enter the realm of feminist jewelry. I have been working with creating collage style scrabble tile pendants and charms. Well, I am thinking of creating themed sets, each dedicated to a historical feminist, or perhaps even a modern feminist. Each set will come with a card explaining the significance of the feminist.
To learn more about feminism, check out some of these links:
1 comments:
I know this is an older post, but just in case you are interested - I wrote a book called "Gender and Jewelry; A Feminist Analysis" that might be of interest to you. It explores the relationship between jewelry and power in different societies - how jewelry can be, has been, and is being used as a tool both to enforce hegemony and to subvert it. Essentially, rather than just describing different traditions, it draws upon different traditions in order to develop an analytical framework that could extend beyond the examples used and serve as a foundation for further academic work on the subject. It also includes a section exploring what it would mean, as a jeweler (which I am), to intentionally create feminist jewelry. The book itself includes images of a twenty piece collection of my own work exploring the topic, as well as images and analysis of other jewelers doing similar exploratory work.
If it's in any way still interesting you to, there's some more info and excerpts on my website, and the book itself is on Amazon and at Google Books.
For what it's worth, I make pennies for every book sold - but I couldn't find a damn thing when I was looking for research into the topic for myself, and decided it had to start somewhere. Three years of really, really hard work later, at least it's available in the real world. Maybe it'll help.
Best of luck to you!
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