FolHave you ever heard of Laura Su? Yes? No? Rings a bell but not quite sure? Well no matter and don’t crack your head trying to figure it out because I’m going to tell you anyways.
Laura Su is a beautiful woman who cares about the environment. She is a talented jewelry and accessories designer who has incorporated her passion for both the arts and nature into the jewelry she creates under her company, Prismera Design. But the reason why I’m writing about her today is because of how she has really impressed me as the woman who has turned my mind around about the use stainless steel as raw material for jewellery.
You see, usually when someone says stainless steel, my mind immediately drifts off to think of kitchen utensils, gates and medical supplies. I would not ever consider jewellery because the usual ones I see made of this material end up rather large and chunky, without elegance and grace- hardly my taste when it comes to accessories.
But when I saw Laura Su’s stainless steel collection called Flora & Folium, I literally went speechless. This IS a breathtakingly amazing collection of botanical silhouettes cut from stainless steel. She had managed to capture the beauty of natural florae, added a touch of modern into it and from it created this amazing amazing simplistic beauty!
Building on the inspiration of flowers and leaves, the collection is made from an eco-friendly, sustainable material that is created from recycled stainless steel components.
There are presently 19 unique pieces within the Flora & Folium collection that are made into earrings and necklaces. They gather their exceptional exquisiteness from being inspired by the following florae:
1. Chrysanthemum
2. Currant
3. Dogwood
4. English Ivy
5. Fir
6. Fuchsia
7. Geranium
8. Honey Locust
9. Mimosa
10. Orchid
11. Pine
12. Rosemary
13. Woodruff
14. Virginia Ivy
And if your favourite flower or leaf is not among those named above, Prismera does custom work and would be more than delighted to create it for you in the botanical silhouette styles of the Flora & Folium collection.
Now if you love the Flora & Folium collection, then you’re going to love the Noctiflora collection too. Inspired by the beautiful flowers -cereus, catchfly, jasmine & moonvine of the nocturnal garden and fabricated from the same recycled material (stainless steel), these pieces are as uniquely beautiful as ever.
I have a question. Do you use the actual flower in your design if so how do you preserve it?
I believe for these, they are merely ’inspired’ shapes of the actual flower. But there are jewelry out there which are made from real flowers and basically they are either preserved through treatment on the outside (freeze-dried flowers simply dipped, or sprayed with layers of resin, then coated with silver or gold) or treatment on the inside where the petals are I suppose injected with some preserving chemical.