By
Gaela Braun

ESTELLE DÉVÉ

The French-born, Australia-based jewelry designer Estelle Dévé found inspiration for her latest creations in an unlikely source—three-million-year-old shark teeth fossils. The Fall/Winter 2012 collection, Paleozoic Dreams, refers to the Paleozoic era when the first sharks appeared on earth. “As a kid, as most kids growing up in the early ’90s [when the first installment of Jurassic Park was released], I was very much into anything dinosaur-related,” says Dévé. Recent visits to the Natural History Museum in London and the Museum of Natural History in New York made the designer realize her fascination was still very much alive. “The original idea behind the collection was to reinterpret more ‘classic’ fossil shapes: ammonites, trilobites, etc. However, no matter how hard I tried, the results were never completely satisfying,” she says. In search for more inspiration at a local fossil store, she stumbled across the shark teeth, which she immediately bought to decorate her office. “For fun, I reworked them in wax and had them cast, while I was still trying to figure out how to rework those other fossil shapes. When the final prototype came back, I knew that’s what I had been looking for all along.” The result is a striking collection of gold- and silver-plated pewter pieces that feature the shape of the original shark teeth fossils. All of the designs also showcase Dévé’s signature well-worn, battered texture, which she achieves through hand-beating each piece. “Nothing appeals to me more than objects that look like they have ‘lived,'” she says. “It maybe be a chair whose paint is flaking, or a t-shirt covered in little holes—anything, as long as it looks like it has a history and a past.”

For more information, please visit EstelleDeve.com.

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By
Gaela Braun

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