Luna & Botswana Agate Necklace

This piece was built around an anticlastic copper moon made by Kyle Cunningham with Botswana agate beads.

On Monsoon Moons.

The rains come and the moon rises. Fresh air on the desert winds gets noses up in the air; even the bees rejoice enjoying a moments respite. The ascendent satellite fills the night with mysteries of shadow and depth where before the abyss stared back alone at us. Now we are familiar with the night - we have our moon back with it’s dance though the clouds playing wistfully among it’s rays. The moon excites the desert, especially in the time of the monsoon when all creatures are happy and active and lost in a celebration of life and being and sounds are called out piercing the quite solitude of the night. The thunder rumbles; lightening illuminates the graphic horizon. And now the moon is gone and the clouds let fourth their burden and the rains coat the desert in candy vivid immediateness cold rain on the skin and for a moment all is well.

We find the moon emptying it’s bounty in these pieces, a mimic of the terrestrial clouds. All dwellers of parched earth are hopeful for the monsoon rains, let this talisman bring fourth the thunder.

The silver arc is formed with sterling silver via a process known as anticlastic forming. A sheet of metal is hand hammered over a homemade curved metal stake in order to form the shape. The anticlastic shape is one of the strongest shapes known to math as it curves the metal in two opposite directions making the resultant form strong and resilient. Anticlastic forming was known in antiquity as shown by archeological finds but was forgotten for more than 1000 years. In the 1970’s a silversmith named Heikki Seppa relearned the technique by studying old jewelry from said archeological finds and then taught others how to do so. I came to silversmithing via a desire to learn how to make the anticlastic form - it’s shape transfixed me to the point that now I find myself creating it.