Description

Wild Mustard Earrings by Joanna Lynn Taylor. Measures approximately 2.5″ long including silver earwire x .75″ wide. Vibrant, eye-catching designs using cyanotype botanicals. The first of Joanna's February 2024 limited edition earring series. They're decorated on both sides (second photo shows the reverse), and she makes the ear wires by hand from 18 gauge sterling wire. The presentation card they come on is signed and numbered on the back.

About the Artist

I merge my love of nature with my love of design to create this jewelry. I select leaves, stems, and petals from native plants to arrange atop specially treated paper, then expose them to the Arizona sunlight to produce the one of a kind photograms that form the basis of my jewelry’s distinctive blue and white botanical designs. Each turns out completely different depending on place, plant, season, and time of day, and it’s always a delight to see the image emerge.

I have been innovating and refining my techniques for making comfortable and durable jewelry from paper for over a decade. Each piece is a tangible link to a particular place, time, and memory. For me, that’s what jewelry is about: comfort, meaning, and memory, and I design with the intent to make art that connects people to memory, place, nature, and all the other things they hold dear.

About the Process

Joanna makes modern botanical jewelry using native plants, cyanotype photograms, paper, resin, and silver. I make original cyanotype images with Arizona sunshine and local plants, and build jewelry from the center out using paper, epoxy resin, and hammered silver. The resulting jewelry makes for a cohesive, eye-catching display and is easily mixed and matched into sets. No two are exactly alike.

BOTANICAL THEMES
I make cyanotype images of different plants from different places in different seasons according to their availability. Each photogram is a large original that I cut into small pieces during my process, and when an original is used, it's gone until I make another of the same plant. Some are very limited in availability. I have grouped the plants according to theme and location so you can select the theme that will appeal most to your customers. Please check the blog on my website for photos of the process and information about my most recent photograms.

Desert Arboretum
This theme features some of the toughest, most iconic flora of the Southwest: the mesquite tree, the green-barked palo verde, the yellow-bloomed turpentine bush, and the source of the unforgettable scent of desert rain, the creosote.

Desert wildflowers
Equal parts beautiful and hardy, these tough little wildflowers common to Tucson make beautiful cyanotypes. Examples include Desert Globe Mallow, Desert Marigold, and Arizona poppy

Garden herbs
This collection is made from some of the most beloved herbs of the backyard and kitchen garden, such as rosemary, and thyme. The current working image also includes carrot greens and wild mustard. I'll be adding to it as the spring, and my own garden, progress. A good theme for shops not located in the desert southwest.