It used to be a better world or perhaps only a smaller one. Webbed. Coherent. Things held together without needing to explain themselves.
I think of that often as I work.
This pendant came into being slowly, way thoughts once did. A pale howlite stone, veined like memory itself, held in copper that has been bent, resisted, softened, and bent again. Copper is honest material. It keeps record. Every pressure remains, every decision leaves its trace. Nothing here is hidden. Nothing is erased.
I do not plan these pieces in the modern sense. I listen. The stone sugests its own boundaries; wire answers with restraint. Craft, at its best, is not control but dialogue.
While shaping this piece, my mind returned uninvited, as memories often do to Mt. Biokovo. It was once my place of refuge and of trial. I climbed it many times, but one morning remains fixed in me beyond language. New Year’s Day, decades ago. I woke before dawn on the highest peak. Snow lay deep. Air was brittle, sharp enough to fracture silence itself. Below me, clouds gathered in the valleys, white and still, like sheets freshly ironed and starched by my grandmother’s careful hands. When sun rose, its orange and pink light moved slowly across the land, sealing that image into me for life.
That memory has weight, not dramatic weight, but quiet kind that presses inward. This pendant carries something of that gravity. It is not decorative in intention. It does not announce itself. It stays close to the body, warming with skin, moving with breath. Around 45mm tall, it settles naturally at the chest, where presence is felt more than seen.
I do not believe objects hold meaning on their own. But I believe they can accompany us. I believe they can bear witness. This is a piece for ordinary days, for walking, waiting, enduring. For moments when one needs something solid, patient, and uninsistent.
Like mountains.
Like memory.
Like well-made things that ask nothing, and therefore give much.