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Tattered Gossamer

@tatteredgossamer

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Steeped in salt, spindrift & weatherworn tidal textures Spellbound by an endless oceanic devotion
⎈ Jewels, millinery, objects of art & curiosity ⎈

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A fleeting glimpse of a piece from an upcoming Tattered Gossamer collection that has been ever so slowly unfurling and coalescing in the liminal periphery for a long time.

As always, it’s a continued exploration into the heart and tangled lore that is the Tattered Gossamer narrative. The mercurial effects of time and the elements upon form. One that will forever be steeped in spindrift and brine. Forgotten objects weathered and worn beneath the waves of a wild sea. Imprinted, altered, and encrusted with creeping oceanic textures that just begin to hint at the salt burnished fragments of a story that has all but faded from the tides of memory.

Salt rusted and encrusted Sterling Silver Oyster Fork.

⎈ Full collection unfolding ~ soonish.

📷: @arniverse 🖤
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#tatteredgossamerjewels
#tatteredgossamer #tatteredgossamerobjects #oceanicdevotion #salishsea taken in San Juan Island by @tatteredgossamer

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6 years ago

{The resonance of our becoming} ~ a sterling silver oyster shell, wave-worn, salt burnished, and imprinted by the tides. Encrusted with textures redolent of untold stories flickering in the perpetual force of ebb and flow. Its bones tangibly altered by the tone and depth of its lived experience. The surfaces marked and scoured, layered patterns nearly but not quite obscuring its original form. This metamorphosis caught and held in the {between} Not yet one thing, no longer the other.

This was the first piece I created after moving to this tiny island in the Salish Sea. When we landed here last fall, we had just ducked out of Miami amidst the surreal storm-lashed chaos that was 2020. We had followed our tethered heartstrings to start a new chapter near dearest friends and live a different cadence among the salty tide forests and rocky shores.

Like most of the world, we had high hopes, big plans, and woven heart dreams that 2021 would unfold in some fashion that was a bit less brutal, strange, and uncertain. A chapter awash in more hope and calm. I can not say that is exactly how these days have unfurled for us, or for anyone it much seems. There has been brightness but also many unexpected difficult life changes, loss and iterations of heartache. The world itself is on fire, heaving, disillusioned, tear-stained and divided. Everyone is living their own differing nuanced experiences, but we all seem raw, tired, and tender-hearted. Adrift in the tumult of the unknown. No longer echoic of who or what we were before, clearly not yet anchored in what we will become. Always the aching beauty of this liminality.

I have long been transfixed and upended by these liminal periods, places, and portals. Both in my life and mirrored in nature. The intertidal creatures, oceanic textures, the margins where land and ocean meet. The effects of time and the elements upon form. The sea change. All seem to embody the ephemeral expressions of these transformations and are inspirations and repeating themes in my work.

This talisman was created to honor the imperfect shadowed beauty and inexplicable magic that can still be found in the depths and resonance of our own becoming. by @tatteredgossamer

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5 years ago

{Textures of Blue}
A darkening sea tinged with dreams and all the many textures of blue, a language all its own, born of oceanic devotion. Evenings spent clambering over barnacle-covered bedrock and poring over exquisite intertidal worlds. Awe in the potent power of the sea change, in those wild frigid swims, as the cold seeped into our bones and quieted the clamor. Shades of an indigo twilight rising, pooling, and suffusing, folding into velvet starlit nights, leaving a palpable hallowed feeling of wonder.

These hand-carved solid sterling hoops were heavily inspired by the spellbinding magic threaded through those early days of our arrival to this tiny island in the Salish Sea ~ as the tentative rhythms of a potential life here were just beginning to unfurl. by @tatteredgossamer

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6 months ago

{Brine and Bone} Cuttlefish have “bones” that are actually an internal shell, made mostly of aragonite. A sea-grown crystal drawn from saltwater, molecule by molecule, coaxed into form by living tissue. Its delicate architecture of crystalline chambers holds air, saltwater, and pressure. This intricate structure allows the cuttlefish to determine its depth, drifting upward toward wind and wave or down into the sea’s deeper reaches.

This piece was hand-carved directly into a cuttlefish bone, a gift found tangled in the wrack line. Silver poured molten, the bone burned to ash, leaving only a sterling, memoried surface. Salt-etched sea textures and sand-drift imprints pressed into metal.
Elemental tidal lore fixed by fire, carrying the memory of buoyancy and songs of silken descent into the depths.

A relic of memory, brine and bone.

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This ooak talisman was made years ago at the beginning of my ongoing metalsmith journey (when we were still living in a high-rise in Miami, learning to make jewels in the stolen moments and quietly pouring molten silver on my balcony 😅). It has been a touchstone spell of comfort that I still wear almost every day. 🐚🕯️

#tatteredgossamer #tatteredgossamerjewels by @tatteredgossamer

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9 months ago

{Filaments and Fragments} ~ an all pearl version. Tiny filaments of salt-burnished articulated sea bones, gifted from cold Salish waters and captured in sterling. Draped in a cascade of Tahitian keshi saltwater pearls. 🐚 by @tatteredgossamer

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10 months ago

Solid sterling hairpins ~ hand-carved/cast from tidal gifts and bones of sea creatures - collected as they washed ashore on some of our sea-soaked nomadic wanderings. Each piece an imprint of a journey. An ephemeral story made metal and embedded with oceanic textures. Salt-marked and changed by time.

{Frond Oyster} A solid sterling silver frond oyster clings to the tip of a wave-burnished sea whip - found along the shorelines of South Florida.

{Rockweed) A solid sterling ribboned piece of rockweed - gifted by wild Salish waters that surround a tiny mossy island that has become home.

{Stony coral} - A perched solid sterling piece of a stony coral skeleton - gathered on brilliant adventures in the Maldives amongst some of our dearest of dear friends.

Will soon have a small, limited run of these available as we lean into fall. 🖤 🌊🐚 by @tatteredgossamer

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a year ago

{Three Graces} A beloved jewel lost to the deep, the full telling of its story we may never know. An artifact washed ashore, visibly changed by the passage of time, worn and eroded by sand and tide. The faint imprint of its original design remains, a tether to forgotten lore. Layers of stories within stories embedded in its surface, meanings and memories echo across time.

The original seal depicts the Three Graces, or Three Charites. Some tales say they were daughters of Zeus and the Oceanid Eurynome—a nymph of the waterways and clouds. Aglaia was the Charis of brilliance and the creation of objects of beauty and artistic adornment. Euphrosyne was known as the Charis of mirth, merriment, and joy. Thalia embodied harmony, festivity, and bloom. Kindred to the nine Muses, they are said to give grace to eloquence and persuasion. Poets, artists, and makers often invoke and pay tribute to the Muses. And yet, the application of that vision and creation, to the embellishment and understanding of all that is beautiful in life ~ this is the treasured work of the Charites.

In classical Greek, the word charis spoke not only of grace, but of the act of giving, receiving, and returning. Aglaia, Euphrosyne, and Thalia came to embody this circular flow—an elegant cycle of offering and exchange. Anthropologists refer to it as “the Graces’ economy,” a system rooted in generosity, reciprocity, and high social cohesion. Beyond the creation of beauty, their endless dance, ebbing and flowing, becomes an allegory for how intention, creativity, connection, and mutual care quietly bind kin and community into something deeply enduring.

Island friends ~ this piece is currently available at @awaterworksgallery 💙 by @tatteredgossamer

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a year ago

{The Drift of Time}
Sand-scoured and salt-etched by the endless motions of the sea. Its tidal-tumbled, mellow luster roughened with layers of briny grit, wrapped in embedded imprints and echoes of marine life. Textures weighted in the remembering. A piece to honor the impermanence of every story and the inexorable currents of change.

Island friends ~ This piece is currently available at @awaterworksgallery by @tatteredgossamer

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2 years ago

{Always Languid Shadowed Beauty} These large, heavy {OOAK} sterling silver cuffs emerged through years of alchemic experimentation—languorously unspooling into intricate remnants of sea-spun filigree, each one slightly different. A wave-wrought cartographic imprint, tracing the tattered, tangled pathways inherent in the ache and beauty of our shadowed depths.

I’ll likely open pre-orders for these in the coming months. Drop me a message if they capture your heart. 💙 by @tatteredgossamer

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2 years ago

A glimpse of things to come ~ I am working on a few different versions of these earrings.

{Filaments and Fragments} Tiny filaments of salt-burnished, articulated sea bones ~ gifted from cold Salish waters and captured in sterling. Draped in Tahitian saltwater Keshi pearls and an intricately encrusted shell fragment. 🐚

Island friends ~ This pair is currently available at @awaterworksgallery

#tatteredgossamer #tatteredgossamerjewels by @tatteredgossamer

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2 years ago

A glimpse of the first piece I created, in a {yet} slowly unfurling collection of oceanic textured flatware and objects of curiosity. A hand-carved sterling spoon - seemingly pulled up from the depths of the seafloor on shifting tides - salt roughened, scoured, and encrusted. Marked with intricate constellating imprints layered and embedded in its bones.

A simple forgotten object caught surrendering to the inexorable ceaseless rhythms of its sea-change ~ as it becomes something else entirely.

I am beginning to work on this oceanic flatware collection again and am excited to see what will emerge.

#tatteredgossamer #tatteredgossamerobjects by @tatteredgossamer

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2 years ago

{Echoes of matter and memory} Mercurial moods of the sea given tangled form and coaxed from the deep. Unfathomable lore and weathered fragments of origin stories born on turbulent waves. Some of these ephemeral echoes captured in sterling and draped with brine steeped Tahitian keshi pearl’s.

Currently available at @awaterworksgallery

I’m stoked and grateful to be included in the February group show opening at Waterworks Gallery tomorrow, in conjunction with First Friday Art Walk. Island friends, go check out all the beautiful art and the always brilliant vibes. Tomorrow ~ Feb 7th 4-8pm. 💙 by @tatteredgossamer

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2 years ago