Ancient Spiral Design Inspiration

What inspires new designs?

People often ask where I find design inspiration, which is a great question!   Flashes of inspiration for new jewelry pieces sometimes come from fleeting moments in time, carefully observing natural shapes or from other unexpected places. 

One summer in Ireland, we visited the mysterious prehistoric site of New Grange (which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site). Over 5,000 years ago, stone-age people cleverly constructed a temple/tomb and passage chamber.  On the winter solstice at dawn, the morning sun is aligned with the interior passage, illuminating the tomb and passage chamber with sunlight. It is an astonishing achievement of astronomical knowledge and engineering of the ancient people who inhabited this beautiful land.

Located around the outside of the tomb/ancient temple are numerous large stones engraved with intriguing megalithic art.  I can only marvel at the time and careful attention to detail these elaborate, mysterious spiral shapes must have taken a group of highly skilled craftsmen to create. 

I am intrigued that people today still find spiral shapes pleasing and use spirals in modern designs. From this perspective, we can see a connection between human creativity and a desire for art and beauty throughout vast spaces in time and history.

The Ancient Spiral design is my interpretation of the timeless beauty and simplicity of the spiral shape.  I created a simple “rose knot” for each spiral, adding another texture and dimension to the spiral.  Over eight feet of precious metal wire is used in this necklace. 

Sometimes when I am making an ancient spiral chain, I wonder about the people who were engraving spirals in stones over 5,000 years ago.