GAUDI'S BARCELONA BRACELET
Become one with the romantic ceramic tilework lining the sidewalks and streets of Barcelona. Gaudi’s vivid, undulating designs are mimicked with circular peyote, right angle weave and segments of Petersburg Chain.
I spent a few weeks in Barcelona, Spain, and marveled at the tile work that lined every inch of every sidewalk and many square feet of many streets. Most of it was created by Antonio Gaudi. The designs are very alive – spirals, curly cues, frenetic lines. And the streets of Barcelona are alive with people everywhere. The sun is warm, the colors both vibrant and muted – the city has a fun feel to it. And this was my inspiration.
Coupled with this intensive emotional sensibility was my desire to try out using the Petersburg Chain stitch in a nontraditional way. I wanted to use segments of chain in a lacy or filigree sense. I liked the juxtaposition of “lacy”, fluttering Petersburg Chain stitch with the harder, more defined circular peyote and right angle weave of my brick walkway.
I did not have a sketch first. Instead, I let “trial-and-error” lead my stitching paths. But once I hit on the general design, I found I had to do a lot of tweaking.
I always try to build in contemporary design principles into my pieces, which include adding movement and dimensionality to my pieces. The main task here was to determine how to connect the Petersburg Chain areas to each other and to the skeletal structure. You will find that my solutions involved some zig-zagged thread paths, and some resolutions of directional flows.
My test piece was in black and white. As I re-did the piece and brought in color, I found I had another series of design issues to reconcile.
The piece uses a 4-color palette. This will probably be the last piece I ever do with 4 colors. Very difficult to pick 4 colors, given the imperfect availability of bead colors.
Materials:
Japanese seed beads, Czechmate brick beads, clasp, chain links.
Pricing:
As shown, $300-400.00
A special version of this piece called "Streetscape:Barcelona" was created for Jewelry Television (jtv.com), Jewel School Program, 10/2018.
Streetscape: Barcelona
