Artifact Project Rational
For my Artifact Project, I decided upon a popular trend in the Victorian Era, that started with Queen Victoria herself, called the Lover’s Eye, or a painted miniature. Lover’s Eye’s were typically a painted watercolor eye of one person’s lover that they would wear on a piece of jewelry. The Lover’s Eye would most commonly be a broach in a simple frame that could be surrounded by jewls if you could afford it. The jewelry was used as a discrete way of showing who the person was either dating or courting and often sparked gossip over who was in the miniature. Yet, it was most commaly used as a way to show affection. I used the painting above as a reference for how I would take my photo later.
Originally I sketched out more intricate designs like the image below. Unfortunately, I have never made jewelry, so I needed to simplify the design so I could complete a broach with the limited materials and knowledge in jewelry making I had. I ended up basing the design off the Lovers Eye above. I knew I wanted to surround the eye in pearls as it was commonly used to symbolize tears, meaning the person whose eye in the portrait had passed away.
I began by arranging and threading fake pearls on a thin metal wire to surround the eye. I cut out a piece of mixed-media paper and painted a left eye in watercolor. Lover’s eyes are typically paintings of the left eye as it’s said to be connected to the heart. I then hot glued the ring of pearls to the paper and then hot glued the miniature to a backing of an old broach. I thought it looked too simple so I evenly spaced out five fake black gems and created a platform in hot glue so that the gems would stand out from the pearls then glued them down. I went in after with a pencil crayon over the eye to fix some values and then set up the camera shoot to mimic the first Fatima Ronquillo painting of Gucci’s Lover’s Eye. Overall the process went smoothly and took me an estimated 4 hours in total with research to complete the assignment. Other than my failure to understand a hot glue gun at first I’d say the Artifact came out how I hoped it would. If I wanted to improve I might have done more research into jewelry to allow me to better understand how to make a more intricate design. I’d give myself a 9 out of 10.
Here’s the final outcome.
Citations:
Bewkes, Stacey, et al. “Lover’s Eyes: A History Lesson.” Katie Considers, 5 June 2018, https://katieconsiders.com/2018/06/05/miniature-lovers-eye-jewelry/.
ESMAN, ABIGAIL R. “Lover’s Eye Jewelry: This Romantic (Yet Eerie) Tradition Is Entrancing Artists Right Now.” The Study, 29 Oct. 2020, https://www.1stdibs.com/blogs/the-study/lovers-eye-jewelry/.
Gotthardt, Alexxa. “Why Lovers in 18th-Century England Exchanged Mysterious Painted Eyes.” Artsy, 4 Jan. 2019, https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-mysterious-history-lovers-eye-jewelry.
All image Citations came from this site:
Bewkes, Stacey, et al. “Lover’s Eyes: A History Lesson.” Katie Considers, 5 June 2018, https://katieconsiders.com/2018/06/05/miniature-lovers-eye-jewelry/.