The Beauty of Strange Stories by Mia Nutick

1.75? pendant, mixed media on ceramic.

Based on the Interfitions anthology

I am a writer, editor, and sometime maker of shiny things. Once upon a time I realized that I had a pile of old dilapidated books of fairy tales with yellowed edges and pages falling away, and I hated to see these old books go to waste. I decided to make some collages using bits of the pages, and in cutting out words and phrases I happened upon the idea of making new poems and thoughts out of old fairy tale and mythic imagery. I wanted to make little poems into adornments for those who love the written word. I called these pieces Chimera Fancies — little pieces of altered art, old storybooks and glitter, fragments of dreams and mysterious messages from the Universe.

Mia Nutick

Button Down by K Tempest Bradford

Bracelet with interwoven cotton ribbon, buttons, and metal lobster hook clasps. Click the images for hi-res versions.

This bracelet is the creation of K. Tempest Bradford, author of “Black Feather“.

My story is based on three different folktales I read as a teenager: The Six Swans, The Seven Ravens, and The Twelve Brothers. In each of these stories a sister has to save her brothers who were transformed into birds. The conditions set for her in each are slightly different, but one that is common to all stories is that she has to sew shirts for each of her siblings to wear. The Six Swans is probably most memorable of the versions because she doesn’t quite finish the shirt for her youngest brother and he spends the rest of his life with a huge wing for an arm. I always pictured the shirts as the white, button down variety–very clean and crisp and simple.

The bracelet is long enough to wrap around most wrists twice, some three times, and can even be worn as a choker.

K. Tempest Bradford

Dig A Hole To China by Sarah Evans

Earrings on stainless steel hooks made from silver wire, silver ribbon, red seed beads, black beads, and shovel charms. Click the image for a hi-res version.

Based on “A Map of the Everywhere” by Matthew Cheney

These earrings were inspired by the part of the story where the ghostythings prompt Alfred to dig a hole to China. The black beads in the center represent holes, and the silvery ribbons represent spirits.

Sarah Evans

One Shoe by K. Tempest Bradford

3″ long dangly earring (just one) made with hematite, glass, and freshwater pearl beads plus shoe charm with a sterling silver French hook. Click the images for hi-res versions.

Based on “The Shoe is SHOES’ Window” by Anna Tambour

Ever since I first read Anna’s story the image of a person coming into a shoe shop to demand just one shoe stuck with me. It got me thinking about how so many things we adorn ourselves with come in pairs because humans seem to find symmetry very attractive. Any time the left doesn’t match the right, we take notice.

A few weeks ago I saw some gorgeous jewelry by artist Traci Lilly (whose stuff is very interstitial). I was drawn to the pieces because most of them were asymmetrical, even the necklaces. Earrings came in pairs that matched, but were not identical. I thought it was a fabulous idea.

These two ideas collided in my brain and this earring is the result. Yes, it is only one earring, and it’s meant to be worn in the left ear, if my intention matters (though it does not have to). The person in Anna’s story who wants a single shoe is actually a male, but when inspiration struck it was a woman’s high heel shoe I saw, so I stuck with that.

When you wear this earring you’ll get many second looks, I’m sure. And it might feel strange at first. But symmetry is so normal, and who needs that?

K. Tempest Bradford

Black Feather by JoSelle Vanderhooft

15″ (inside) necklace made with bone, onyx, amazonite, glass, howlite, seed beads, hematite, garnet, cloisonne, coral, “quarz” glass, diachroic glass and sterling silver. Click the image for a hi-res version.

Based on “Black Feather” by K Tempest Bradford

When I read a story intending to create jewelry from it, I take very careful note of color - both those mentioned in the story and those which occur to me as I read and after I lay the story aside. This was terrifically easy to do for K. Tempest Bradford’s “Black Feather,” because color is a central theme in this piece, from the red of a mother’s womb to the steel skyscrapers of Manhattan to the white of clean linen shirts to the ever shifting blue of sky. And then, of course, the ubiquitous black feathers of the title, which I have endeavored to represent with onyx.

“Black Feather” is a story, among other things, about accepting death and the soul-transformation that we go through when we stop fearing our mortality. For this reason (and to represent a plot point that is too beautiful to spoil for you here), I have created the necklace’s pendant from the memento mori of a skeleton, a glass egg and a red bead representing the living we who stand between both ends and beginnings.

This was one of the most challenging necklaces I have ever made, and one of my favorites. I hope that I have represented Tempest’s story accurately and skillfully.

JoSelle Vanderhooft

The Lapis Tree by Cris Fisher, Queen of the Cat People

Lapis hearts, moonstone drops, quartz, glass, pearls, & sterling. Click the image for a hi-res version.

Based on “A Dirge For Prester John” by Catherynne M. Valente

“I took him to the river which churns agate against marble and showed him the thing we had made: a sapling, whose stem was of silver, whose leaves curled deep and blue, lapis dark as eyes, veined in quartz flaws. Tiny fruits of white opal hung glittering from its slender branches, and the moon washed it in christening light. This is hell, he quavered, as I stroked the jeweled tree. It seemed to shrink from him in shame. I touched his face, his unyielding neck; I wrenched his head towards me, and he stared into the eyes that blink from my breasts, the cobalt leaves peeking around my ribs like the heads of curious peacocks. At the ends of the earth is paradise; look around you, the earth is nowhere to be seen, I had whispered, and I do not need pearls.”

Ms. Valente never fails to include literal treasures in her work- luscious gems and precious metals- and has inspired me to make so many pieces of jewelry based on her stories. This passage reminds me of the alchemical aspect of love, transforming base people into precious creatures, which is the very nature of the human soul. But some get hung up on perceived costs and don’t realize it is given freely.

I’m also a sucker for lapis.

Cris Fisher

The Blemmyae by Joselle Vanderhooft

21″ necklace made with cloisonne beads, bone, Botswana agate, glass, copper findings, and approx. 3″ carnelian pendant. Click the image for a detailed/hi-res look.

Based on “A Dirge for Prester John” by Catherynne M. Valente

Valente’s tale is a complex story about colonialism, religion and an incredible romance between a Blemmyae (the “anthropophagi” to which Othello refers in Act I of Shakespeare’s play) and a befuddled priest. It’s a story of scorching desert sands and madness, of Old World and New World, of love between two very different beings. It is a tale of dichotomies, religious, cultural, emotional.

This piece is made out of copper chain and copper findings, to match the desert sands of her homeland which Prester John “discovers.” Along with the carnelian pendant, she is made from cloisonne beads, bone, Botswana agate (the large black and white beads that look, appropriately, like eyes) and glass (the small black and white beads that look like eyes).

Joselle Vanderhooft

Lily, Surrounded by Rats by Helen Pilinovsky

Necklace made with antique faceted gunmetal glass beads, black stick pearls, and jelly glass. The smallest section of necklace is 14″. Click the images for hi-res versions.

Based on “Rats” by Veronica Schanoes

“Rats” is a fairy tale inspired by a nightmare, a retelling of “Sleeping Beauty” which overlays the death and life of Nancy Spungen, late of punk-rock legend. I read “Rats” for the first time in the spring of 2006, I think, knowing nothing about Nancy Spungen or Sid Vicious - all I knew was that it was a beautiful, mind-blowing, heart-breaking revision of a fairy tale that had never really appealed to me. The innate passivity of “Sleeping Beauty” had ticked me off since I was a child (maybe I was too influenced by an early reading of Hamlet: the line that always rang in my subconscious following her curse was “were it not that I have bad dreams”). I could never figure out why she’d been so quick to trust, why she’d sought out the tender prick of the spindle in the first place. But, give our heroin(e) a reason to seek the needle? I’m there. All I know is, “Rats” made me cry, which almost never happens.

Lily, Surrounded by Rats is made up of antique faceted gunmetal glass beads, twinned black stick pearls, and a luminous tear-drop of jelly glass found in a junk shop.

Helen Pilinovsky

There are a lot of threads we’re picking up and chewing over, but this question from Elise is particularly crunchy:

When you make art of some kind, whether it’s writing a story or making some shiny thing or other, do you feel the impetus in your mind, or as a sort of pull in parts of your body, or something else? Is it different for different arts, for you?

Lurk and absorb or register on the board and join in.