Rethinking Materials: Experiments with Wood

This year, I decided I was really going to experiment more with materials and techniques. My goal has been to search for the beauty within each material and discover which technique allows that beauty to speak most clearly.

I stepped away from social media early last year as a way to reclaim my time and embark on a creative path shaped more by self-discovery and less by the algorithm. These past eighteen months away from Instagram have helped me strip away many of the ideas that had quietly influenced me for years, allowing me to rediscover what was already waiting for me in my studio.

At the same time, I found myself watching interviews with celebrity stylists and interior designers who spoke about materials, texture, and perceived value in clothing and furniture. One idea kept resurfacing. Style is not defined by a label or by how expensive something is, but by how thoughtfully it is combined. True style comes from pairing old with new, precious with playful, refined with bold.

This idea really struck a cord with me. What if beauty has nothing to do with hierarchy? We are taught to rank materials, to see some as precious and others as ordinary. What if walnut deserves the same care as sterling silver? What if glass can be just as captivating as a gemstone? What if the value of a material lies not in its rarity, but in what it allows us to express?

Those questions led me to experimenting with different wood species and teaching myself how to carve them by hand using the jewelry techniques I already knew. This newest series became an exploration of the material itself, allowing the grain, the color, and the warmth of the wood to speak for themselves.

The two design elements above were carved entirely by hand from walnut and olive wood. Throughout the website, you'll begin seeing pieces that grew from these experiments, and I can't wait to show you where this new material continues to take my work.

Walnut wood, olive wood.