Osteal Jewelry is run by horticulturist and jewelry designer Amanda Joe Langston in Seattle. It is animal bone jewelry, but all materials are sourced and crafted cruelty free. Crafting animal bones and salvage into jewelry is popular with some folk these days, so I thought I’d go through all the questions folks send Amanda regarding the crafting process. I hope this interview will be helpful to other folks who are messing around with bone scavenging and jewelry making, as well as interested in one of a kind nifty designs from Osteal Jewelry.
Will you give the readers of CVLT Nation an introduction to Osteal Jewelry?
Osteal is a line of cruelty free bone, hair, teeth and occasionally fur jewelry (with some wood and brass thrown in, for good measure). I wanted to use natural items, while not creating more garbage for the world… Plus I wanted a way to pay tribute to the wild bits of life. All items are found/scavenged – nothing comes from factory farms, fur farms, trapping or trophy hunting. I’ve been vegetarian for over ten years and having ethically sourced materials is extremely important to me, and i hope to my customers.
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We have been doing CVLT Nation’s Favorite Tumblrs for a while now, and it only makes sense that since I spend too much time trolling Instagram that I start a CVLT Nation’s Favorite Instagrammers feature! We don’t follow too many people because I like my feed to be quality over quantity, so today I am giving you my top 3 so far – NYC iPhone photographer Daniel Arnold, Montreal’s Ovate clothing and Philadelphia’s Bloodmilk Jewelry. These three consistently post photos that I have an emotional response to, whether it be to their latest creation, a stunning, haunting scene or a moment of hilarity. I am simply in love with whatever Bloodmilk and Ovate make, so it makes sense that I follow them to see what new items they have that I can dream about owning one day that I am not living on a tight-to-nonexistent budget. Bloodmilk often features work by other talented artists as well as curiosities and oddities which inspire my posts and makes me feel good about the endless well of creativity in the world. Ovate posts her own stunning clothes as well as beautiful shots of Montreal, her studio/loft space and recently old photos of her Quebecois family. Daniel Arnold captures the complexities and eccentricities of New York City in his candid street and subway shots. His photos make me laugh with humanity rather than at it, and there is often a deeper message underlying his images that was completely unintentional by his subjects. Check out some shots from my favorite Instagrammers below…
A Chance to Support the Creative Community
From the Black Lodge0
Posted In Events,Fashion,Features,Independent,Jewelry
It’s been said that it’s hard out here for a pimp, but I would argue that it’s even harder for an independent artist or designer trying to make a living selling their work to a society mostly obsessed with obsolescence. Unlike the large corporations that dominate consumer culture, the work of small business is often meant to last – the materials are quality and each piece is lovingly constructed by human hand. It’s really the only thing that small business in North America has going for it; we certainly can’t compete with the quantity and price of the corporate goods. But a growing number of people realize that supporting local artists and designers – whether in the music we listen to, the clothes we wear or the art we decorate our house with – has much larger benefits than just getting something that will last you longer and is made better than its made in China counterpart. By supporting your friends and neighbors, you are improving their lives and the community’s economy, because the money stays in the community and cycles through it, supporting other local businesses and helping others improve their livelihoods. Unless you think we’re all better off working at Wal-Mart for minimum wage. Most small business is a minimum wage job, but one infinitely more rewarding than greeting huffy obese shoppers and making rich Christians richer. Being creative and running my own business has made me get used to being broke, yes, but so happy. However, I believe that the time of the artisan is nigh, that disgruntled citizens are waking up to the fact that the only way to live the way we want to live is to support each other at a grassroots level. One of the only ways creative people have been able to survive is by supporting each other, and Amanda Moore of Adelina Mictlan jewelry is doing that with her popup shop project From the Black Lodge. She has big plans to do a series of national and international popups featuring designers and artists who produce their pieces in small batches by hand, companies like Ovate, Guts, Glam Glory, Morph, Death/Traitors, Terra Luna, Wicked Apothecary, Thrillhaus, Lisa Muerta leather works, David Guy and more. She’s starting out at Austin Psych Fest this year, and she needs our help to get her started, so she’s put up an Indiegogo campaign to raise the funds. There are 7 days left to get involved, so I highly recommend that you check it out now. She has some excellent incentives for people who donate starting at $1, including a jewelry raffle, patches, tees, totes, tattoo credit, Adelina Mictlan gift certificates, original paintings and the one I am hoping for – a chance to win a stunning Bloodmilk ring. After the jump watch read about her mastermind plan and please help her get this awesome project started!!!
Starting out in 2006, Sam McFadden under the pseudonym ‘Homemade Speed‘ began making dystopian looking jewelry made from a cauldron of found animal bones, waste and decayed industrial hardware. Since then it has progressed through machinery and biosphere to individual dayglo punk jewelry pieces. Think fluorescent toxic chemicals, Slimer and a soundtrack by Alien Sex Fiend. After the jump, take a look at some more jewelry pieces.
Kuolema
Ovate S/S 20131
Posted In Fashion,Features,Independent,Jewelry
I am so excited for the launch of OVATE’s new website and store today at 3pm PST/6pm EST! Audrey has been working hard to conceptualize and produce a gorgeous line for her Spring/Summer 2013 collection, Kuolema, that will launch in her new shop today. Right now all I wear are CVLT Nation t-shirts, but one day soon all I will wear is Ovate’s dusky silks and dark leathers, inspired by beautiful pallor and shadows of death. Kuolema focuses on the materials – silk, cotton and bamboo knits, washed lamb leather – and highlights their natural elegance with minimal, flattering silhouettes. Ovate creates such a complex beauty out of a simple palette of black, grey and white, and this new collection carries the brand forward while maintaining her strong design aesthetic. She has also ventured into jewelry with fellow Montrealer and jewelry designer Elaine Ho, casting an antique Masonic axe to create really fucking sick earrings and necklaces that I have to get my hands on. You can get yourself into all of these clothes and more at her website launch today, so make sure to head over to Ovate.ca…there will also be some limited edition pieces only available in her store, like her classic Valhalla hoodie in a stunning light grey. After the jump, check out some of her Spring/Summer 2013 offerings, plus some haunting photos from her lookbook shot by Krist Mort. I’ve also included a photo of the designer herself and her rad studio with some of my favorite Dilek Baykara prints on the wall (we have the same ones up in our HQ!).
Alchemical Schoolgirl
Fila Arcana Hand-Embroidery
An Artist Interview0
Posted In Art,DIY,Fashion,Features,Independent,Interviews,Jewelry
I’m always looking for unique and quality vintage, antique, and handmade items to add to my wardrobe. So, it should be obvious that I’m an extreme Etsy fiend. I was lurking through the site when I first noticed Fila Arcana -let me tell you, if you’re into the film “The Craft”, you’ll love what Fila Arcana from Toronto, Ontario, has got going. The style is eerie yet delicate, mysterious and pure, like a witches student, or black magic lolita. Mina Sewell Mancuso, the High Priestess of Fila Arcana, hand-embroiders beautiful works onto pinback buttons, wall hangings, and peter pan-style detachable collars. All the designs she offers are inspired by “alchemy, the occult, and all things esoteric.” Items adorned with symbols, moon phases, beasts, palmistry, and more. All conjured by hand, the details in each piece are skillfully intricate, classical, and bewitching.
“I render secret things in colored threads.”
Jangling chains dripping bones, metal and ivory matter marrying to imbue the wearer with Death’s magick. Deth Maiden creates pieces that drape you with death, combining stones and chachkies with vertebrae and jaws to decorate your body. Her pieces are hand made and one of a kind, and very reasonably priced, so if you are looking for something for that special shaman in your life, check out her page for what she has available. After the jump, enter Deth Maiden’s boneyard…
Lacquered is a new jewelry line by San Francisco-based artist Angela Casserly. Casserly turns her artists’ eye on to her jewelry, and creates stunning sculptural pieces to adorn the necks of gothic goddesses. Each piece is handmade and custom, so that no two are alike, and the result is that you wear a piece of her sculpture. Her pieces are dense, crawling with insects and writhing scaled creatures, but at the same time they exhibit a lightness, and look as if they could fly away at any moment. They are immortalized in lacquer, an entomological still-life that hangs from chain. She often uses bats as the body of the piece, coating their leathery wings with moths and beetles and winding lizards at their feet. One of my favorite of her pieces is a broach with a snake’s head peeking out between butterfly wings. If all this description sounds flowery to you, what brings her jewelry an element of dark, ominous beauty is it’s thick blackness, as well as the shapes she creates out of organic bodies. Lacquered can be bought from Casserly’s Etsy shop HERE. After the jump, take a look at a gallery infested with beauty…
The High Priestess has done it again. Lavish leathers, authentic fur pelts, decadent silks, and warm wool cloaks that drape and adorn the body just as one can imagine darkness itself would. Staying true its name, Ovate‘s Fall/Winter 2012 collection ‘La Grande Noirceur‘ has gone above and beyond (or should I say deeper into the vast and enchanting depths) to manifest the captivating beauty of darkness.
Before the launch of this collection, I actually had an interesting dream where designer Audrey Cantwell herself took the form of a physical, dark, spiritual entity who went by the name Ovate. It was pretty epic, in all honesty, and looking at the new extended set of gowns, I could definitely say that this beautiful and mysterious entity is being manifested.
I’m also excited to say that with this new collection also comes new lamb-leather bags and a stunning jewelry collaboration with Joanna Szkiela, featuring woodsy silver rune rings and necklaces. Most of the new threads are currently up in the shop, but the jewelry collection won’t be added for another few weeks (so start saving!).
One of the illustrators who put us on the path to CVLT Nation is Doomsday Graphics – his art has an intensity and a punk rock spirit that resonated with us as soon as we saw it. His wife and partner in crust is Acid Witch Produxions, and she handcrafts some very unique and stunning etched brass jewelry using Doomsday artwork. This is taking punk artwork to another level, immortalizing it on brass with her own special hand-made acid etching technique. Acid Witch’s collections feature occult jewelry in beautiful shapes with macabre images burned into their surface, as well as extremely awesome metal patches that can be attached to one’s vest with screws. In my quest for rad and disturbing jewelry, Acid Witch Produxions is one of the most inspired set of pieces that I have found. After the jump, check out a selection of her work, and make sure to go to her site to see what she has available for sale.
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