Lucky Tiki God Necklace
Part of the Sheila Satin Collection on Etsy:
Each piece will arrive boxed/pouched, cleaned from negativity, charged in the sun, with a positive affirmation for you to program yourself!
May 09, 2008
March 10, 2008
Paradise Found by Betony Vernon
‘‘My work is a response to all things plastic, black, evil and cheap that don’t give people the chance to explore the power of the body.’’ That tantalizing quote appeared in last Sunday's New York Times feature on Betony Vernon. The article may highlight the "titillating" aspects of Vernon's "erotic ceremonies," but as the writer also notes there's more to the sex than just sex. Her Paradise Found website explains:
"Ritual," "mission," "education," "mystery"--the language of transformation pervades Vernon's work. And it's not just talk: check out the following iconic design, which links the flight of the spirit to bone and flesh:
Besides offering a jewelry line, Paradise Found also doubles as a postmodern mystery faith, with a secret gathering place and rites known only to invited initiates--one more sign that we are living in the midst of a new Renaissance, where art, spirituality and commerce blend into one.
January 30, 2008
Miniskirts for nuns
Minidresses inspired by a nun's habit, via Mini.
January 29, 2008
Too hot for Craft Magazine: What would Jesus sell?
Murketing has gone where Craft feared to tread: printing the censored article, "What would Jesus sell?" The title is actually a riff on a new Morgan Spurlock documentary; the article itself is not about Christianity. Rather, it's an inquiry into the commodification of handicraft, asking whether the market for handcrafted items is actually consistent with the movement's do-it-yourself ethic.:
But I can't help thinking: Isn't shopping, no matter how wonderfully crafty and politically correct still, well, shopping? Can you escape the so-called sin of consumerism by buying handmade? Isn't the whole point of modern crafting Do It Yourself--not Buy from Someone Who is Doing It Themselves? Not to be a total hypocrite; I shop Etsy and artisan crafters as well as buy the crap from China just like everyone else. It's just that I see a new trend, which is moving away from crafting and towards consuming. What's next? "Hip Craft" aisles at Wal-Mart?
The presumption--now denied--that the reference to Jesus would be offensive to Christians highlights an unintended consequence of protests against blasphemy: rather than speaking of Christianity more reverently, people might conclude that mentioning Jesus at all is more trouble than it's worth.
January 26, 2008
Peace is the word
AM New York has a feature on New York designers exploring the theme of peace. Tanya Farah's work--with words for peace in English, Hebrew and Arabic--wasn't illustrated, but it's something for which I'll be on the lookout. Rosena Sammi, designer of the Kismat collection, has this to say about her work:
"When your thoughts and feelings tend towards purity of mind/body, hope, and bliss," she says, "the effect on your life can be profound."
Who knew?
January 15, 2008
The Real Religious Housewives of New York City
Who says New Yorkers are just a bunch of cynical secularists? Among the cadre of women featured on the upcoming Bravo TV series "Real Housewives of New York City": a religious fashion entrepreneur. The bio below claims that the website above is her line; seems a bit incongruous, but what do I know?
Ramona Singer is a busy entrepreneur. She owns her own business, R.M.S. Fashions, a jewelry line, truefaithjewelry.com, a clothing line “True Faith,” and is developing a skin care line as well. She and her husband Mario, a third generation jeweler, and their 13-year-old daughter Avery, live in a striking four-bedroom condo in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. They also have a beautiful second home in Southampton directly on the water. Ramona is an avid tennis player and loves to entertain and is constantly organizing dinner parties and social events.
December 26, 2007
Time and timelessness--a Daniele Buetti light sculpture
December 11, 2007
How bad Christian morals can give you a burning bush
When teaching entrepreneurial strategies and values, there are a couple things I always advise folks to look out for: the unintentional illicit double entendre and unoriginal borrowing of other people's ideas. And for reasons I won't get into today, religious enterprises seem especially inclined toward both.
Today's example:
The "Hot!" Burning Bush tee-shirt touted by Threadless knock-off Can U Believe It.
The double entendre is obvious, accentuated by the strategic placement of fallen leaves in the woman's lap as if to focus attention on where the fire will start. The first question that popped into my mind when I saw this picture was, "Isn't abstinence supposed to prevent that??"
The second problem is more systemic. From Godtube to blatant trademark ripoffs, Christianity is fostering a horrible reputation for unethical appropriations of others' intellectual property. Commercial companies have by-and-large held back from filing lawsuits, no doubt in large part due to fear of a Christian consumer backlash. Can U Believe It? only adds fuel to the fire, blatantly ripping the business model and interface design of popular user-created t-shirt site Threadless.
As this Mediabistro article indicates, resentment toward this practice is growing and at some point we'll hit the tipping point. Or to put it in more theme-appropriate language, "Repent, for the judgment of law is at hand."
April 26, 2007
Donna Karan's Urban Zen
Donna Karan is moving from fashion to philanthropy to an intiative that blends spirituality, alternative health care and institutional re-design. Read more about it here.
January 27, 2007
Bowing at the altar of Jean Paul Gaultier
At the Paris couture shows this week, Jean Paul Gaultier inspired the fashion world with his faith-based designs. Above, "British model Erin O'Connor appeared in a long gown, printed like stained glass windows in a church, with a fabric "corsage" of a naked baby boy perched on her left shoulder."
June 17, 2006
Sporty Spiral
Customers of the Spiral Online Shop have a lot at stake in the World Cup--if England wins the whole thing, the store promises to refund the price of anything purchased during the month before the games began.
June 01, 2006
Ka Gold
This new press release explains the history & philosophy of Ka Gold Jewelry, a store recently featured here on the site.
May 25, 2006
Nanogold
Above: arguably the world's smallest item of quality gold jewelry, a 16-atom configuration newly created by scientists but not yet available in stores. As this article from the New York Times notes, 20-atom configurations of gold take a pyramidal shape, an array echoed in the golden sands of Egypt.
Below: a small, but not quite that small, merkaba from cosmic jeweler Ka Gold (HT: Jennifer Emick).
DA VINCI CODE EXTRA: click the pic for Ka Gold's explanation of the mystical merkaba and you'll see a rather familiar figure, pictured here in a more family friendly version!
April 28, 2006
Jewelry of the Spirit
Continuing this week's occasional theme of emerging designers' jewelry of the spirit is, well, Jewelry of the Spirit, created by Liz Alpert.
Besides depicting her designs, Liz's web site tells the intriguing story of how breaking her back in ski accident led her to find healing power in natural beauty. Follow the links to learn more about the larger movements of which Liz is a part--including the Reconnection, a healing movement out of Hollywood that has made Liz its official jewelry designer.
SMALL WORLD EXTRA:
Liz Alpert is the niece of Richard Alpert, more popularly known as Ram Dass.
April 20, 2006
Coolstones
The latest in the series of Metals and Crosses is up at Coolstones, the blog of Anne Maa Designs. This entry includes a piece utilizing a Hindu depiction of the Seven Sisters.
April 18, 2006
Sacred Retail Space
This is a photo from a Sole Sisters shoe store in Michigan. As the description on Flickr explains,
Owner Lauren Beras is spiritual and is thankful to God for her business. She wrote scriptures on the floor before they laid the carpet. She wants for people to walk on the scriptures.
Sacred Retail Space
This is a photo from a Sole Sisters shoe store in Michigan. As the description on Flickr explains,
Owner Lauren Beras is spiritual and is thankful to God for her business. She wrote scriptures on the floor before they laid the carpet. She wants for people to walk on the scriptures.
February 17, 2006
Fish on Friday
When denizens of ancient Roman catacombs sketched images of fish, little did they imagine that the role their piscine sketches would play in later culture wars.
Today, though, I want to turn swords into mindshare and without strife or judgment take a look at how the fish has become an all-purpose symbol for belief.
What is this last one, you ask? Why, it's the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which emerged as an object of worship worldwide at the height of the recent Kansas controversy over intelligent design!
February 09, 2006
Following Yonder Stars
Do you ever get so fed up with the vanity fair atmosphere of Fashion Week that you wish the whole thing would just go up in smoke? That's the prayer of many industry insiders, and it looks like their wish might come true.
Why would divine wrath come down upon Bryant Park? The unholy presence of two Paris Hiltons?
Close, but not quite. It all comes to down to one little word that some fear is a Satanic snare:
Astrology. 
As the New York Times chronicles in its Fashion Diary, an obsession with star power rules the major prophets of couture, as designers seek diviners from Justine Kenzer to Starsky & Cox, whose bestselling Sextrology is "the bible du jour at Colette."
So the moon is in the Schouler house and Jupiter's aligned with Kors, but does this mean the dawning of the age of Aquarius?
The Times is skeptical--it ascribes the waxing faith in stars to an "overall tentativeness" born out of fashion's "dicey" prospects. Astrology may reflect a hunger for certainty and meaning, the article opines, but it does so through a "loopy" hodge-podge of arcane symbols and postmodern pop mythology.
The Bible--the Hebrew one, not Colette's--offers a more dire prophesy of what lies in wait for astrological artistes:
Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee. Behold, they shall be as stubble; the fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame . . . . (Isaiah 47:13-14)
Yikes! Is there any hope for salvation in the Blingdom of God?
As illustrated by the accessories above, figures from astrology flourish in design. This is perhaps to be expected, since the spiritual union of astrology and fashion flows from the same source as religious ritual or belief in a divine plan: our innate fascination with the forces that shape us and the patterns they create.
Whether astrology is sinful or sublime I leave to the conscience of each fashion saint. For now, I simply invite you to meditate on this: if "the heavens declare the glory of God," perhaps it's inevitable that so many people look to them for guidance.
February 07, 2006
Seek and Ye Shall Find
In the Blingdom of God there are many mansions, most of which are unknown to the average seeker. But fear not! Our mission here is not simply to unveil the mystery of religous symbols, but to bring to light designers and stores that one might otherwise miss.
A jewelry maker whose work I've enjoyed contemplating recently is one that I would have never found outside the web: Trilogy Jewelers, located in Gauteng, South Africa. Under "Stories" on their site they feature what they aptly describe as "jewelry with meaning," including multifaith religious symbols and designs based on African masks.
Clicking around the site reveals that Trilogy has supplied jewelry to none other than the Walt Disney Company, thus proving that it's indeed a small world after all!