Lauren Davidson Necklace

THE STORY BEHIND THE DESIGN
This piece was inspired by the MJSA Responsibly Sourced Design Challenge Story

Normally when I’m commissioned to make a piece, I don’t do anything on paper; I just sit down with the stones and play with them until the design comes together. This time, I went to town sketching the different shapes of the stones on paper. While I was sketching, I was thinking of how Lorna’s mother had collected all these stones, which clearly had sentimental meaning to her. I started seeing the stones as representative of Lorna’s mother and her two daughters and focused on a design where the daughters’ birthstones would be clustered around the large sunstone.

My decision to create a pendant wasn’t a conscious choice; all my rough sketches kept coming back to the idea of a necklace. I settled on a pendant design with the sunstone at its center and the birthstones set on either side. As a nod to Lorna’s love of history, I opted to create a handmade silver chain for the pendant. Chain is an old way of making chain—it’s been done for centuries—and it seemed a fitting way to tie things together.

The design is clean and simple because I didn’t want extra metal to detract from the beauty of the sentimental stones. Instead, the stones, which clearly held great meaning to Lorna’s mother, are the centerpiece. The necklace’s simplicity will also allow Lorna to wear the piece regularly, and not just save it for special occasions. It could easily take her from day-to-day activities to a swanky evening event, all the while keeping these special stones close to her heart.

Lauren Davidson is the owner of Ellie Air Jewellery in Dorset, United Kingdom.