Homotherium On Jewellery
by Kasia.
I have various interests, and usually don’t have the time I could dedicate to all of them. So I’ve decided to combine my passion for jewellery with my passion for palaeontology and paleoart.
Homotherium earrings
I can spend a lot of time reading about some extinct creature or other, or drawing life-restorations, and later feel guilty that I didn’t spent this time designing something . But now I have solution: jewellery featuring extinct animals.
I decided to start the new series with Homotherium: a saber-toothed cat that lived during Pliocene and Pleistocene in both Americas, Eurasia, and Africa, sometimes referred to as scimitar-toothed cat.
The necklace
The necklace and the earrings are made of copper. I hand-painted the designs, and then etched them with salt-water etching process. After the pieces were etched, I oxidized and polished them. The necklace’s chain was also entirely made by me.
I actually paint patterns with nail polish applied with… a toothpick. Very high-tech.
Making them was interesting: I didn’t want to have just some generic saber-toothed cat head on those, so I first had to draw Homotherium’s head, to get the proportions right, with a picture of one’s skull as a base, and then scale the drawing down so it would fit on the pieces.
The necklace, showing off a little bit more of chain
The earrings were especially tricky, being only 1cm (0.25in) wide.
I’m not sure how many designs like these I will be able to make, as it may be difficult to find customers for them, but I would be really happy if I could continue to create them, as they’re such fun to design and make!
