Tuesday, November 18, 2008

The Byzantium necklace...

I made another necklace today and called it Byzantium. I have used 3 Czech wedding cake beads (being one focal), gold-plated spacers, Czech glass golden balls and gold-plated oval small beads, and the most special gemstones: 2 dragon veins round, smooth beads and all the rest in shades of pink/burgundy jade.

It is called Byzantium because of its crimson and gold, almost solemn shades - perhaps smelling a bit like old churches and incense - and the use of Chinese beads (jade and dragon veins agate). These beads allude to the Silk Road, and the role played by Byzantium as the rendez-vous for the merchants on their way to the East, searching for spices, silk, precious resins, gemstones, and so forth.

It tries to symbolically link East and West, or at least the idea I used to have about Constantinople, the Silk Road, and its heritage of churches, gold, stained glass and History.

Here it is:
The close -ups are:












Czech focal bead, 2 spacers (plastic with bronze effect!), gold-plated thin spacers, 2 small cherry jade rondelle beads and the 2 chunky, heavy dragon veins (dark burgundy). The remaining beads are the rose, cherry jade ones in different shapes and sizes.

And finally, the other two Czech beads surrounded by the cherry jade beads:

No comments:

Post a Comment