It has been years since I wrote the Let’s Meet column and thought that it would be fun to bring it back. I begin this edition with an interview with Narrative Art Jewellery Maker Asagi Maeda a.k.a Morning yellow. One of my favourite everyday things to do on Instagram is to scroll through my feed looking for one of her new jewellery stories. Hence I am thrilled to present this feature on her work.
Morning yellow – Narratives as artistic wearable jewellery
Asagi Maeda’s creations fall under the narrative jewellery genre, with the narrative literally being a part of the jewellery viewing. Her Instagram posts are as much about the photographs of her stunning jewellery as they are of the stories about the pieces. She refers to her jewellery as “art jewellery” and finds it natural to write a story on the piece. “Writing and making are both expressions from different sides,” She says. “It’s not about importance. It’s just the natural thing to do.”
Impressed by the sculptural contemporary art jewellery that she saw in Jewelry in Metalsmith Magazine, she moved to New York. “I got my credits transferred from my University at Tokyo where I studied sculpting to Fashion Institute of Technology, NYC and completed a two year course in a year.” It was at FIT that this graduate Gemmologist from GIA, started making her ‘Box jewellery’ that tells stories. The box in opinion separates the inner world of thoughts and memories from the one that is outside. She likes to listen to people life’s stories, their feelings, and crystallize the stories into jewellery. “Each of these boxes have a window, and beyond each window lies the life of a stranger” she notes, referring to Tokyo as a big city of boxes. In her Interview with the Jewelry Journey, She speaks about how she made a bracelet for class that tells the everyday story of an office worker.
Ningen – Human
Asagi’s ningen or human figures that feature in her boxes are exquisitely made. She begins her design process by drawing and writing about the theme. Once she is satisfied with the concept, she begins making her piece using wax carving and casting, and metal smithing. She often uses silver, 18K gold, acrylic, and semi precious stones. Occasionally, she also likes playing with materials such as wood, porcelain and enamel to add to her primarily metal pieces.
Apart from Asagi’s Ningen box jewellery that I really admire, I also love her earlier pieces of art jewellery such as this ‘Moments of sunset’ necklace. It records the latitude and the longitude of 74 cities in the world, along with the time of sunset at each city on 15th May 2006.
In conclusion, she puts it rather poetically “the real jewel is the heart and ones eyes are the windows to the world inside. Like imagination, like the universe it expands.”
Asagi Maeda Ships internationally. You can see more of her work at her Instagram handle Morning yellow and on her website.
I hope you found it interesting
Cheers
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