One of things I love about Victorian jewelry is how clearly it relates to furniture and architecture of the same era. In the mid-1800s, when architects and designers were embellishing every building, cabinet, and vase with the Greek key, jewelry designers were carefully enameling the same motif onto tiny little rings and lockets. Lately it seems like this effect is reemerging, but instead of playing off design motifs, designers are sharing broader aesthetic concepts.

My favorite shared design concept lately is the use of burnt wood. For about 5 years now Maarten Baas has been carefully charing iconic pieces of furniture, leaving them blackened and beautiful. The Times recently wrote about J. Morgan Puett’s Pennsylvania house, in which she purposefully burned wooden floorboards and sealed them with linseed oil and polyurethane. And now the concept has trickled down to jewelry, with the French designer Natalia Brilli (an Erie Basin favorite) incorporating burnt wooden beads into her collection this fall. It’s hard not to be drawn to the rough charcoaly black surface of burnt wood!

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