This Season
Éveil
A shed skin keeps the shape of the animal that left it. Four pieces made on that principle, and two things in nature that arrived at it first.
The flower
It falls in one piece.
A camellia does not shed its petals. It drops the whole bloom at once, still assembled, still the shape it was on the branch. Japanese keeps a word for the one on the ground: ochi tsubaki.
The serpent
It holds without cutting.
A serpent takes hold by going around. It does not pierce, trim, or grip harder than the job needs. What it holds keeps its own outline.
The argument
One belief, twice.
A flower that falls intact and an animal that holds without closing are the same idea from two directions. Both leave a shape as they found it.
The four
Nobody straightened them.
- Borrowed Stone
- Turquoise set as found, 28 × 15 × 8 mm. The setting opens at the base instead of closing over the outline, so the edge the stone arrived with stays visible.
- Red Eye
- An 8 × 6 mm cabochon on three points, deliberately unenclosed. Three is the fewest that will hold it still. The band tapers 8.0 to 3.0 mm. 6.5 g.
- Orchid Serpent
- Petals carved by hand from mother-of-pearl, so the grain repeats nowhere. The stem is one unbroken curve — 18 × 12 × 8 mm, 2.4 g each.
- Misaligned Pearl
- Freshwater pearls, 8–9 mm, mirrored rather than matched. Worn together they do not line up, and that is the point. A 1.5 mm sapphire. 3.2 g each.