One Designer Jewellers Preferred Source of Ideas
At the time Orkney jewellery designer Ola Gorie designed her first brooches showing Orkney's heritage the products were considered unusual jewellery as she was actually a innovator among jewellery designers. Her very first piece of unusual jewellery, the Maeshowe Dragon, included graffiti etched by Viking tomb raiders.
Now this brooch is regarded as iconic and has now been well liked for a lot more than half a century, so is not any longer unusual jewellery, more like a 'must have' classic nowadays. And a host of additional jewellery designers have implemented Ola's lead and turned to heritage for inspiration.
The Maeshowe Dragon was hand carved by a young Viking on his way home from the Crusades about a thousand years in the past. It was uncovered within the Maeshowe Neolithic tomb that's 5,000 years old. The dragon sits alongside the very best selection of Norse runic designs outside Scandinavia.
Orkney has other examples of graffiti dating from the 18th to the 21st centuries. An archaeologist in Orkney, Antonia Thomas, is now studying rock art as an element of her PhD investigating 'Inscription as Social Practice: Orkney's Rock-Art and Graffiti'. She has recently been examining 19th century graffiti inside the Neolithic Unstan tomb near to Stromness in Orkney. Monuments bear symbols with names and dates from visitors, nevertheless these are not likely to motivate unusual jewellery creations from jewellery designers. She's discovered that 120 years back there had been a significant fad in heritage tourism with visitors traveling lengthy distances to view Orkney's wonderful geology and archaeology.
The Unstan Tomb was opened in 1884 when clearly there was a vast quantity of antiquarian activity around the world. People looked for fossils and prehistoric artefacts and this resulted in the tourism growth on the islands.
Among the list of names engraved in the rocks are some examples from Edinburgh and even Keighley in Yorkshire. Sam W Wells left his mark in 1890 and Antonia is trying to learn more about this early visitor. She has found a few clues through simple census and trade directory searches. He was actually a brass and iron foundry entrepreneur in the town of Keighley. She wonders why he travelled to Orkney - for business, pleasure or even see associates?
In these days, of course, anyone defacing ancient monuments with his or her name could well be prosecuted. This would be viewed as an act of criminal damage. Four years ago a holiday-maker scrawled a message on a bed in an historic stone house in Skara Brae, announcing XXX slept here, plus the date. Police matched the name to the owner of a vehicle who was visiting and caught up with him while he boarded the ferryboat returning to the mainland. His marks weren't left on the Neolithic monument for archaeologists of the future to come across - he ended up being made to remove them personally!
However the older markings are important indications that inform us about the people that visited the monuments and also raise interesting questions about social history, say the archaeologists. And the Viking graffiti and also the dragon image are now a part of the attraction of going to the Maeshowe chambered cairn, that had been excavated in 1861.
Unusual Jewellery Produced From Viking Artwork
These 30 inscriptions seen in Maeshowe cairn, make it one of the biggest, and most well known, collections of runes known in Europe. The Orkneyinga Saga recounts that more than 800 years back a number of Viking warriors had looked for shelter from a dreadful snowstorm. While they were waiting in the stone chamber for that storm to settle they chiseled graffiti on the stone walls. A large number of primitive designs appear in finer form in Viking jewellery items.
The majority of the writing is boastful. It contains individual references to skilful rune carving with lots of names and as well to the elegance of a woman known as Ingibiorg. Ola Gorie has also designed a jewellery range which bears this particular Viking lady's identity. A different Norse group of soldiers later on also left their marks on the walls. However, if the Vikings had been on the lookout for treasure, they would undoubtedly have been unhappy.
Nevertheless, the legacies of their inscriptions are treasures in themselves now. Guides for the tomb highlight the remarkable runes by torchlight. And jewellery designers Ola Gorie have designed two collections of unusual jewellery prompted by the Norse warriors' etchings. These old Vikings have unquestionably left their mark.
Making use of Viking graffiti as a technique to obtain inspiration surely has created some unusual jewellery, on the other hand, in the event your own personal preference is for some thing contemporary then maybe you should just click here.
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