Drake Jewel

Sir Francis Drake, vice admiral (c. 1540 – 27 January 1596) was an English sea captain, privateer, navigator, slaver, and politician of the Elizabethan era. 

Drake carried out the second circumnavigation of the world, from 1577 to 1580.

Upon his return to Plymouth after his voyage, Drake presented the Queen with a jewel token commemorating the circumnavigation. Taken as a prize off the Pacific coast of Mexico, it was made of enamelled gold and bore an African diamond and a ship with an ebony hull.

For her part, the Queen gave Drake a jewel with her portrait, an unusual gift to bestow upon a commoner, and one that Drake sported proudly in his 1591 portrait by Marcus Gheeraerts now at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. On one side is a state portrait of Elizabeth by the miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard, on the other a sardonyx cameo of double portrait busts, a regal woman and an African male. The "Drake Jewel", as it is known today, is a rare documented survivor among sixteenth-century jewels; it is conserved at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Tagua Nuts - Jewellery

What is Tagua and how the jewellery is made?

It's really interesting to know how TAGUA jewelry is made, since it take several month from the moment they collect the tagua nut, until the moment the product it's made and ready to sell.

The tagua nut is a dried seed from the tagua palm tree, which grows in tropical rain forests of South America (Ecuador, Colombia, Peru and Brazil).

Tagua is also known as natural ivory or vegetable ivory, because its similarity with ivory (it's hard, unbreakable, resistant and beautiful), but tagua is natural, they don't have to kill elephant in order to get it.

The tagua nut comes in a fruit that carries multiples nuts. Each nut has a shell that contains the seed. This seed is the size of a chicken egg and is covered in a thin brown skin.

The nuts are sun-dried for 4 to 6 months before they can be worked with. Once dried, tagua can carved and be polished to a bright shine. Tagua's natural color is white but it is easily to dye and can be found in different bright colors or pastel light colors.

Handmade tagua jewerly is not only beautiful,colorful, resistant ad unique, but after you get to know the long process that takes to make the jewelry, you are going to be amazed by.

Source: www.latinartjewelry.com 

Fordite, or Motor Agate

What do you know about Fordite?

Fordite, also known as Motor Agate, is a unique automotive enamel material with an interesting history. The original layered automotive paint slag "rough" was made incidentally, years ago, by the now largely extinct practice of hand spray-painting multiples of production cars in big automotive factories. The paint over-spray in the painting bays gradually built up on the tracks and skids that the car frames were painted on. Over time, many colorful layers built up there. 

These paint over-spray layers were hardened repeatedly in the ovens that the car bodies went into to cure the paint. Some of these deeper layers were even baked 100 times. Eventually, the paint build-up would become obstructing, or too thick and heavy, and had to be removed. As the story goes, some crafty workers with an eye for beauty realized that this unique byproduct was worth salvaging. It was super-cured, patterned like psychedelic agate, and could be cut and polished with relative ease! Wow!