Inspirational Images

Stacey delves into the depths of the natural and microscopic world to find inspiration for her creations. These fragments of hidden detail provide a platform from which Stacey creates her award winning, innovative and original pieces of jewellery.

Using a variety of precious stones and lenses, Stacey creates a wide range of high quality sculptural male and female jewellery, handcrafted in gold. Stacey's variety of techniques with a distinct style of craftsmanship, provides a refined balance of strong architectural lines and soft organic shapes and textures, to create a piece of art that is beautiful, functional and visually intriguing.

Below are some of Stacey's inspirational images from Colombia.


Gold artefact from the Gold Museum

Gold artefact from the Gold Museum

Colombian Flora

Lulo Fruit

Detail, La Casa de Terracota

Raindrops

Moss

Moss

http://www.staceywhale.com/

Villa de Leiva surrounds

The countryside surrounding Villa de Leiva is varied, with semi desert to the west, moorland to the east, and a national park that is mainly high cloudforest. Over the course of a few days, we were to be inspired by art and nature, the pale, green landscape taking on a painterly quality.

Stacey and I passed many locals along the way, and were always met with a 'buenos dias'.



Stacey with a friendly local.

Of interest was La Casa de Terracota, a Gaudi-esque construction built entirely out of ceramic tiles extracted from the local area and worked directly onto the building. Practically everything is made of terracotta, including the furniture, and there are interesting mosaics and homewares.

Mawasi Finca

After leaving Bogotá, Stacey and I headed to the artistic community of Villa de Leiva, a colonial town in the department of Boyacá. We stayed with wonderful hosts, Bonnie and William, in a house that they have built with friends, 'Mawasi Finca', Mawasi meaning 'to have found a home from the earth'.

View to the guest cabin from the kitchen

A beautiful setting lit by fireflies at night, Mawasi Finca was a great base from which to explore the surrounding area. Beginning the day with William's breakfasts and ending it with an outdoor shower under the stars was the perfect antidote to the city.

A Mawasi Finca Breakfast

William is also a jeweller and creates pieces of jewellery using the lost wax technique.

http://www.mawasifinca.com/

The Gold Museum of Colombia

I met Stacey Whale, the jeweller attached to the Green Gold exhibition, in Bogotá and together we visited the Museo del Oro, or Gold Museum, one of the most important collections of pre-Hispanic metallurgy in the world. The collection began when the Banco de la República acquired a Quimbaya lime container or poporo, made of gold. Today the collection comprises of 50,000 objects made of metal, ceramic, stone, wood and textiles, of which 35,000 are pieces of pre-Colombian gold work, most of which are found at the Museo del Oro.



Detail of the painting by Francis Martin featuring the Quimbaya lime container or Poporo.

On display is the work of the pre-Colombian indigenous groups that have been identified in Colombian territory, and how they found and worked gold. Each culture had distinctive characteristics which set them apart, and this is presented within a geographical and historical framework. The centrepiece of the museum is the Salon Dorado, a dazzling display of 8000 pieces inside an inner vault.

www.banrep.gov.co/museo/eng/home.htm

Colombian Connection Project

In Cartagena I met Kay, a travel writer who introduced me to the rest of the group she was travelling with in Colombia. Led by Alan, and called the Colombian Connection Project, the concept of the journey was to change people’s perception of Colombia whilst acting as a catalyst for change. I joined the group on one of their journeys, exploring the island of Isla Grande. which forms part of the National Park of Corales del Rosario. This reserve comprises of a group of 30 coral islets, 45km southwest of the Bay of Cartegena. Kay and I decided to explore the island by canoe and glided pass red mangrove trees and into mangrove swamps. The trees are known as walking trees due to their long roots. It was very peaceful and idyllic.



Travelling back we journeyed via the Canal del Dique, built by the Spaniards in 1650 as a connection to the Magdalena River, which served as a route to the interior of the continent. The evening was spent in the stylish surrounds of the Santa Clara Hotel, a former church and monastery, and the setting of the story ‘Of Love and Other Demons’ by Gabriel García Márquez. A gold, shimmering wall hanging entranced us, the artist of the work being Olga de Amaral. I was to encounter other pieces of her work during my travels and each piece was as beautiful as the last, very textural and woven.

Emeralds

In Cartagena, I visited another wonderful museum, the Museo de la Esmeralda, a museum dedicated to the study, gathering and conservation of emeralds. It took a few times to find the ‘real’ Emerald Museum, with a jewellery shop on the same street proudly displaying the sign ‘museo’, and a taxi driver who took me to an emerald factory instead.
The museum has a fantastic array of emeralds in their natural state, some very rare, including the trapiche, which apparently has a waiting list of potential buyers including Spanish royalty. The museum, however, will not part with their prized emerald.

A trapiche emerald exhibits a star pattern, having ray-like spokes of dark carbon impurities that give the emerald a six-pointed radial pattern. It is named after the grinding wheel used to process sugarcane in the region. Colombian emeralds are generally the most prized due to their transparency and fire. Some of the most rare emeralds come from three main emerald mining areas in Colombia, which are Muzo, Coscuez and Chivor in the department of Boyacá.

Colombian emeralds may be highly sought after, but are they ethical. Privatised in 1973, the mines have often been the preserve of cartels and prospectors, with dangerous working conditions being the norm. The work of emerald dealer Ronald Ringsrud is seeking to reverse this trend by introducing the concept of fair trade emeralds in Colombia, working with small-scale, artisanal emerald miners to create safe and fair working conditions, whilst reducing poverty and strenthening communities.

Museo de La Esmeralda - Calle Don Sancho #36-75, Cartagena de Indias

Cartagena - Museo del Oro Zenú

Cartagena de Indias on the Caribbean coast was my first destination. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, Cartagena's walled city is an architectural delight, bathed in colour and light. Founded by Pedro de Heredia in 1533, the city served as Colonial Spain's storage point for treasure, which was collected from the Americas before being shipped to Spain.

First stop was the Museo del Oro Zenú, the Cartagena branch of the Gold Museum in Bogotá. Specialising in gold artifacts from the Caribbean coast of Colombia and the coastal plains, the well-displayed pieces are primarily from the Zenú people and are all between 500 to 2000 years old.


Detail of painting by Francis Martin featuring Filigree earring, Zenú tradition. 200 B.C.-1600 A.D.

Fabrics and the weave played an essential role in the daily and religious life of the Zenúes, the weaving and basketwork industries influencing pottery and metalwork styles. Metalsmiths used the cast filigree technique to make earrings, by weaving or imitating fabrics and plaits in wax threads, which they transformed into metal. They lived amidst a maze of streams, rivers and marshes, and wove together a waterway system made up of an intricate network of canals.