There are so many reasons to wear jewelry. To accentuate an outfit. To carry a loved one’s token. To add something beautiful to a mundane day. Or to feel like a glorious, magnificently powerful badass.
Does the click of your heels against the sidewalk create seismic shockwaves radiating out into the universe as you charge into the world, wielding the strength of your desire and the steel of your heart to do battle with whatever fate throws at you?
Then Lisa Kim‘s newest collection, The Seabeast, is for you.
Jewelry designer Lisa Kim – also known as the Metal Mythologist – has long been captivated by the mystery of the vast, unknowable sea. These depths are what sparked the idea of The Seabeast:
The sea is where life began. The creatures of the deep are among the oldest life forms on Earth. I always get the shivers when I see coelacanth, monkfish, rare footage of live giant squid. Their kind have been around a lot longer than we have, and they will continue their line long after we go. This survival strength is what I mean to capture in my work.
Imagine that each piece in the collection comes from a mythological sea creature, an ancient being of wisdom and power. No one really knows what this creature looked like but each of us can dream up our version when we view these pieces. The Seabeast is meant to evoke the feeling of mystery and wonder that we experience when we see fossils of animals that went extinct long ago.”
The result is spectacular.
Today is launch day for The Seabeast, so you’re among the first to see these new designs. Some of the pieces are literal, like this incredibly badass tooth ring. With its elongated golden teeth and diamond studded jawbone, this ring is small but impossible to overlook.
Other elements of the collection are more abstract – jagged, toothlike pendants with ripped-looking edges, earrings that look like they could be the scales of some long-extinct aquatic dragon – ways to incorporate a bit of wildness into an outfit fit for whatever the modern woman warrior needs to accomplish.
Several of the pieces feature ethereal opals and glowing blue moonstones, limpid, water-like stones that evoke The Seabeast‘s oceanic origins. A piece of ancient Seabeast, captured in gold and diamonds, fit for wearing to a board meeting, a ballroom, or a battlefield.
Behold the Opal Spine earrings: these beauties are objectively lovely, with their rich yellow gold studded with the opals’ soap bubble iridescence, but the overall silhouette elevates the total piece to a new level.
You can see in both these earrings and the tooth ring above that The Seabeast‘s treasures feature a textured matte finish to the gold, to further the impression that these are pieces that have been weathered by deep water and the passage of time.