Manymals. Sterling Silver Necklaces By Markus Diebel Benefit WildAid.

I absolutely love these modern and fluid looking sterling silver animal pendants that hang from snake chains by jewelry designer Markus Diebel!

He’s artfully rendered a dog, a sloth, a gorilla and a bat in 100% sterling silver in his San Francisco studio and to make them even more desirable, 5% of sales of each piece benefit WildAid, a nonprofit dedicated to ending illegal wildlife trade within our lifetimes.

Images of each Manymal are shown from front and back below:

The SF-based organization has chapters worldwide, including Galapagos and China. Details on Markus’s creatures —Sloth, Bat, Gorilla and Pug— are detailed on the backside of his innovative black bubble packaging. Solid silver on a sterling chain.

• Packaging: Innovative black card bubble pack.
• Size: Chain (from clasp to charm) 13.5"
• This item normally ships in 3-4 days.

Exclusive to the A+R store, $260.00 each. Buy them here.

New Orleans Jeweler Designs Collection To Help Gulf Coast Oil Spill Cleanup

Mignon Faget, a jewelry designer based in New Orleans, has introduced a new collection dedicated to raising awareness and funds for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster.



Now considered to be the largest offshore spill in U.S. history, the disaster has already had an extensive impact on marine and wildlife habitats. For Faget, the impacts of the spill and the cause of restoration in the area are especially close to her heart. The designer's very first collection was one inspired by the nature of the Gulf Coast region.




The new collection, dubbed "In Mourning," features pieces that Faget selected and redesigned from her earlier collections. Redfish, speckled trout, oysters and pelicans are presented as sterling silver or 14-karat gold pins backed with black ribbons or as pendants on black cords. The designs are meant to be worn in the tradition of mourning jewelry and so the collection evokes a somber mood, yet it also carries a spirit of hope.




"It is a heartbreaking statement to make with jewelry originally designed to celebrate the abundant gifts of our coast, but the reality is that we need to make people aware of this disaster and the long-term effects on this region," Faget said in a media release.




Designs in the In Mourning collection retail from $65 to $300, with proceeds benefiting the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana (http://www.crcl.org/), a nonprofit organization dedicated to restoring and protecting the Louisiana coast. The collection is available in Mignon Faget galleries in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, La., as well as through the designer's Web site, MignonFaget.com.

Wearing Your Weaknesses With Cast Of Vices Jewelry

Whether you've kicked the habit, or still indulge, the jewelry from Cast of Vices is a hand crafted reminder of our vices, be them smoking, drinking, pill-popping, snorting - or even chewing on a pen cap.

Cast in sterling silver or gold, the pendants, bracelets and pins are detailed representations of our culture's obsession with self-medicating. The fly is said to serve as a reminder of the 'stench of our addictions' and is available on any piece shown.


Cigarette butts:

Beer Bottlecaps (Corona, Budweiser and Miller High Life):

Pills, pills, pills in gold or sterling silver:


Pills bracelet:

With flies:

Fly pendants and cockroach pin:

Pen cap and pouch pendants:

Vials with sterling silver caps:


All pieces are hand-crafted in the USA with sterling silver or 14k gold using the lost wax casting process.


To find your nearest stockist, go here.

Growing Rings & Necklaces by HAF, Now Available

Talk about your green thumb. Or rather, finger. Hafsteinn Juliusson is an Industrial/Interior designer from Reykjavik, Iceland living and working in Milano, Italy who has come up with the idea of combining living organisms with sterling silver jewelry.




Growing Jewelry from HAF, designed by Hafsteinn Juliusson
Growing Rings and necklaces are a mix of jewelry and plant, couture and organism. The rings and pendants hold actual living greenery and are now available in limited production. This collection is a handmade product made in Iceland and all pieces are made out of molded silver.

The images you see below are available. Other sizes are available by special request.

The Rings:






The Necklaces:





Rings like the one shown above are available by special request only.
above photos by Harpa Hödd, Saga Sigurðardóttir and Sóley Þórisdóttir

It is important to take care of the Growing Jewelry. For best results water it only once every 5 weeks and be careful not to water too much. It’s also good to store the ring in deep freeze to preserve it. The moss can stay green for up to 8 - 12 months but Hafsteinn Juliusson takes no responsibility for that :)



The rings and necklaces can be purchased directly from the designer here.
Or from Gnr8.

Kria Bones Up On Jewelry Design, Vertebrae Necklaces and More

kria, n (sterna paradisaea) migrates farther than any other bird and in known for ferocious protection of breeding grounds.

Kria jewelry is a collection of femur bones, wing bones, caudal vertebrae, branches and twigs cast in 14k yellow gold or sterling silver. Necklaces on rope chains or leather, bracelets and rings, some embedded with diamonds, others with pearls, are all delicately rendered as miniature and elegant wearable pieces.



I'm going to show you the pieces in gold, but keep in mind, many of these are available in sterling silver, too.

Some of the necklaces:




Gold vertebrae necklace and bracelet on leather:

Gold bone and branch rings:

gold branch bangle bracelet:

Gold bone and branch earrings:


The inspiration for Kria appeared on a black lava beach in eastern Iceland in the summer of 2006 when Johanna Methusalemsdottir found a skeleton of the bird by the same name nestled in the sand. The birth of her second daughter, Lóla Salvör came soon after as did the birth of the Kria collection and both are growing.

Kria was officially founded in 2007 while Johanna was experimenting with the re-contextualization of elements of the natural world through jewelry. In an effort to integrate the shapes of organic objects such as bones and branches with the shapes of the human body, she began a fresh illumination of the grace of evolutionary design with the Kria collection.


Johanna Methusalemsdottir (above) originally left Reykjavik, Iceland for New York City in 1988 and worked her way into the world of fashion with Me & Ro jewelry as their first employee before she took time off to give birth to her first daughter, Lóla Salvör. Later she became a press officer and a fashion media liaison for Patrick Cox, a manager of a retro-couture showroom, and finally a stylist working with magazines including Crash, British GQ Style, Nylon, Fade, Black, In Style, Oyster, Blast, Trace, Beaux Arts, Black Book, Sportswear International, Clear, Composite, Seventeen, as well as for national television advertising.

ALL ITEMS COME IN A HAND PRINTED EGG SHAPED LEATHER POUCH WITH A POST CARD.

Kria Jewelry is all handmade and produced in New York City. You can purchase her jewelry and other cool Iceland based design items at Icelandic Market