"Pomegranates" is a collection of non-narrative storytelling concerning birth - bloom - death, the journey of life itself. This collection’s designs are based on the seeds of pomegranates, implemented through an attempt to imitate the technique of granulation via hand-sculptural plasticity. Pomegranates are the fruits of prosperity symbolising luck and renaissance, cherished by many cultures and implicated for the sake of art, customs, and sacred ceremonies -mainly throughout the Mediterranean & Middle East- across centuries to this day. The seeds of pomegranates -the jewels of the fruit healer and love potion, or the fruit of the dead according to ancient Greek, Arab and Persian mythology- ignited the vision of “wearing them” beyond seasons, beyond time, in perpetuity. Due to their deep red color and unique exuberant formation, pomegranate’s etymology (ρόδι / rhódi in Greek) is connected to the words of fertility, fortune, power, cleanse and success, as well as abundance, rebirth and so on, in coherence with the verb ρέω (ῥέω / rhéo), meaning to flow; to exist into a constant state of flux. This collection’s designs are based upon the study of a rare Berber wedding ring of prominent conic & triangular form -that I found in Marrakech in 2014- and the traditional Mediterranean granulation technique of Etruscan and Minoan origin which has been my main goldsmithing/microsculptural practice for the past few years. In Arabic, “rumaan” (pomegranate), has the literal meaning of “sharing their cheek, referring to an extinct Morrocan practice, whereby leather artisans recruit passersby to help them peel pomegranates with no other reward than their taste. The pomegranate peel was then dried in the sun and grounded into a powder, used as a softening agent on leather. [Thank you my Wiam for sharing this story with me, mi amiga de corazón.] The intention of this narrative is to convey a personal story of mine, revolving around a pomegranate tree and a suitcase. The meticulous granulation applied in these artifacts stands as an abstract and conceptual emulation of the pomegranate grains. And somehow, like that, it all came together into one solid idea. The colliding imagery is leaning towards an intuitive -instead of a historically linear- consequential imagery regarding the intricate course of living. Consequently, in this collection, you can notice the seeds, the tree that sprung from them, its blossoms and fruits. Therefore, the aesthetic language is mainly semantic and the style is raw and complex yet minimal, illuminating the designated granulated and incised textures of each piece, being completed with a frosting finishing touch.
by Méri Charitonidi
