They're nearly here! The Illuminated Letter pendants are all finished and will be released this week. It's been six weeks of working consistently on this project and I'm thrilled to finally be able to share them with you. I thought I'd give you a little introduction on this collection so that you know what to look forward to.
I've always been a fan of gothic fonts. Once I started experimenting with enamels, I came up with the idea of combining these two themes and voilà, the birth of the Illuminated Letter pendants. I wrote about medieval illuminated manuscripts in a previous blog post, and I decided to make an alphabet series inspired by those intricate capitalized letters at the top of a paragraph.
Each pendant is a miniature painting made with enamel, a type of glass that fuses to metal. I combined the enamel painting with an 18k gold lacquer to highlight, or 'illuminate' the letter. Using a set of hair-thin liner brushes, I was able to paint fine details on each pendant and make them all different from one another. The pendants are inspired by anything from Spanish flamenco scarves to William Morris wallpaper designs to Renaissance textiles imported from the Silk Road.
I used a variety of fonts, some of them were (free for public use) from online resources, and some were imitations of the originals found in those medieval manuscripts. Many of them began through imitation and then blossomed to other font forms that became my own designs.
The pendants are all backed with bronze to maintain its historical allure. Bronze has a mysterious golden glow to it, and the very word conjures strength and power. When I hear the word, I think of the elaborate bronze shield forged for Achilles before his going off to battle. It's a metal that is strong while being flexible, and I chose to use it purely as metaphor. It's a personalized initial symbolic of either your first name or your surname, that is backed by the strength of bronze. Bronze is also hypoallergenic, maybe a less attractive attribute but an important one nonetheless.
So let's get down to business.
This pendant series will be released this Thursday, March 18, 2021 at 8am MST.
I am offering my email subscribers an exclusive discount, and you can join the list by clicking here. There is only one pendant available for each letter in the alphabet, including the ñ. This theme will become a permanent collection on my website, so when a letter sells, I will make a new one but the designs will always be different. I will use email in the future to notify you of any new letter pendants.
That's it for now, thanks so much for taking the time to read this post and I hope you enjoy this upcoming collection!
Caitlin