HOT ! Midwinter Moth. Mother of Pearl Necklace. * Limited *

IMPORTANT: This jewel is limited and we are unsure if they\'ll be available again in the future. We recommend Express Shipping with signature required upon delivery to best ensure it arrives safely in your hands. 

PLEASE NOTE : This necklace will be created with an 18\" bar link chain. If you desire a different chain length, it\'s important that you email us immediately after placing your order. 

Because these stones are limited, we are not able to accommodate any requests for specific stone preferences.

At the time of my writing this to you, there are still remnants of winter storm Fern crowding the streets outside of my building in the form of mounds of dirty snow and plates of ice. Before it became a weird burden to navigate, watching the storm descend held a special kind of awe, as it tends to do when snow heavily falls where I live in the Northeast. It snows here less and less, but when it does, the world feels enchanted, less a chaotic city; time slows. We have just passed the midway point of winter, halfway to Spring ~ and in honor of this we offer Midwinter dreams, a collection of winged winter night creatures, the Moth & Owl, as well as Mother of Pearl as a visual stand in for snow.

Inspired by several “real” winter moths that remain on wing in the depths of winter, this new version of our petite Datura Luna Moth carries a Mother of Pearl tear between its antenna, representing a drip of ice.

Mother of Pearl was used during the Victorian period as mourning jewelry as it represented tears and the eternal nature of the soul. Here, it acts as a symbol of the quiet “death” of winter, the inner journey and solitude with often experience in the older months, much like the moth endures when in chrysalis.

Datura Moth:

Datura stramonium ( with a species of 9-14 varations ), also known as Jimson weed, Thorn apple and Devil’s Trumpet, is a flowering that originated in the Americas and spread across the seas. Much like other members of the solanaceae family, it is highly toxic in high doses. This includes all parts of it, from its gorgeous trumpet like flowers, to its toothy leaves, its roots and its infamous inky black seeds which are incased in spiky seed pods. In smaller doses, it has been used in the past as healing salves for inflammation and pain while also being utilized in folk magic to induce visionary and hallucinogenic states. Among tribes with shamanic practices, Datura was considered sacred and can be found in cave paintings and on pre-historic ceramics, suggesting its use during these times. 

One of the attributes of this plant that drew me to it aside from its beauty and folklore, is its ability to grow alongside the edges of places, even here in the city. Its seeds disperse when its pods dry and crack open and I’ve witnessed it grow from cracks in the sidewalk, through holes in chain link fences, abundantly in between buildings and in other abandoned empty spaces in the city where such beauty seems out of place. It is seemingly weed like in nature and yet in other places, it is planted with care as an ornamental despite its poisonous properties. 

I’ve been amazed at the thick roots of one bush that grew wild in an abandoned space between two buildings before it was cut down, its seeds freckling the earth as if to say, you haven’t truly destroyed me. Its hardiness in the face of a gritty landscape and Phoenix like regenerative qualities endears me to it as much as its beauty and magical properties. 

Moon colored, Datura unfurl and open at night and is therefore pollinated by moths, Sphinx moths in particular who hover around its blooms like hummingbirds, sipping from them with their long tongues. I witnessed this for the first time last summer, while visiting one plant with a friend from out of town near where I live in a fairly industrial part of the city. We watched the moth drink from flower to flower in wonder in the hot summer night air until it moved on. It felt both strange and wonderful to witness and I don’t know why it surprised me to see; if there are flowers thriving in the city, surely there could be Sphinx moths ?

This fortuitous moment inspired the jewel on offer here : a hybrid creature, a moth that is a Datura, a Datura that is a moth. Its sinuous body is meant to evoke the rippling petals of the Datura flower in bloom while also retaining the gesture and features of a moth, albeit one born from dreams rather than natural history. 

Moths have long been a creature I’ve used in the library of my personal symbology within BloodMilk. As a symbol of transformation: beginning their lives as caterpillars, they gorge themselves before outgrowing their exoskeletons. They will sometimes shed their skins ( like a snake ! ) up to five times with their final time forming its chrysalis or pupa. This is the fascinating / magical part for me: their caterpillar bodies will begin to disintegrate into a kind of jelly yet its believed they retain some of their memories as their new body moth body forms in the velvety dark protection of its cocoon. Once its ready to emerge, it begins to break free and its struggle to release itself also helps pump fluid and energy into its wings. Moth signifies, a period of patience, surrender and profound transformation or awakening through introspection. Just like Datura, Moth is linked to the Unseen world and many feel that moths are messengers from the spirit world, bringing signs from their beloved dead to them.

*Details* :

- 32 mm from top to bottom

- 24 mm wide

- Solid sterling silver: oxidized to achieve a stormy gray. Hand polished to reveal the luminous silver tones beneath.   - Set with one 6 x 8 mm pear cut mother of pearl

 Pearls :

Have an ancient history of reverence as well as a long legacy of beauty. Pearls are formed when an external irritant, like a grain of sand, breaches the shell of an oyster or shelled mollusk. Once this irritant has gained entrance within the dark fleshy confines of the oyster, it goes to work protecting itself. If this irritant can’t be expelled, it begins to ‘bandage’ the grain, coating it with concentric rings of calcium carbonate, named ‘narce.’ Each layer that is built up forms the shape of the pearl, awash in a brilliant iridescence, a beauty born of a tiny trespass. Thusly, a pearl has at its center, the object of its creation, a foreign intruder.

I associate the pearl and its strange construction to so many things: the jellied caterpillar struggling within a chrysalis, its liquefied body forms a new winged shape. An embedded star smoldering within the shell of our hearts. An ink dot, a pin prick, a moon in miniature. History, who has always loved and revered the pearl, writes that we once believed pearls were the result of lightning striking the shell and penetrating the inner skins of the oyster. A small beauty made in duress, a ‘stone’ of initiation. To possess a pearl means to own something that is hidden, sacred.

Lore has it that Cleopatra, to win a wager with Antony, dissolved a large, exquisite pearl in her drinking glass. She swallowed it in one sip. I wonder about her dreams that night.

These jewels are hand cut and therefore may have very slight differences in size and may have small signs of the carver\'s hands along the edges. These are not fabricated by a machine, they are made by hand and therefore aren\'t uniformly perfect. The photographs accurately portray the quality of the stones and the cuts. 

***IMPORTANT***

This jewel is handmade to order, just for you, with care and focus. Please allow approximately 6-8 weeks for creation before shipping.                   

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