Featured Artist: Jeweler Brittanny Chanel

From the Mouth of a Metalsmith

By Brittanny Chanel
QuailBellMagazine.com

Serendipitous happenings. My love for transforming metals and stones into my own personal adornments expanded into creating for friends, which eventually led to small collections and shows and finally into my very own brand. I now have a full working studio in our two bedroom apartment to meet my growing customer base—a feat I am ever grateful for. Dabbling in several different facets of jewelry design allowed me to explore and find the areas in which I thrived. Each day is a learning process where I continue to surprise myself with small serendipitous happenings that make for new designs and techniques.

Alchemy. Minimalism is a concept that inspires my work in both metals and precious/semi-precious stones. I aim to create pieces highlighting my strong metalsmithing abilities. These pieces can either stand out alone or be layered, stacked, and mixed to create a unique look dependent on the wearer. Ideally, I aim to create pieces that everyone will enjoy, but in the end, I usually ask myself, would I wear this?  If the answer is no, I will keep tinkering until the piece becomes what I envision and sometimes beyond my imagination. There is certainly a different kind of satisfaction that comes from visualizing, creating, and wearing the thing that once lived in my own imagination: it’s alchemical.

Metal Musings. I realized early into metalsmithing that choosing one “source” is confining. Currently, I have two collection, Goddess Collection and Irie, as well as my Custom pieces. The Goddesses, as I like to call them, are a compilation of gold, sterling silver, and stones that stem from my love and fascination with ancient and classical mythology: beautiful and mystical stories of powerful goddesses paired with the image of prowess ornamented in various handmade trimmings are the crowns for this collection. These simple, yet statement-worthy, pieces primarily in gold are meant to adorn and empower the wearer. I chose stones for Goddess  that possess qualities to center, strengthen, cleanse, balance, enhance, and heal. 

The Irie collection, centered around sterling silver, rose gold, and turquoise, is inspired by my Norwegian and Caribbean parents who both grew up in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Irie is an island term that means “great, good feeling, and happiness.” This collection is a combination of my Norwegian and Caribbean roots—a thank you to my family for their inspiration. The beauty and serenity of the island’s coastlines, water, flowers, and sunsets evokes a feeling of happiness that I strive to emulate in my designs. 

My custom gallery is a continuously growing collection of pieces I created for friends, family, and strangers for whom I would bring their ideas to fruition. Whether it’s a simple can you make me a necklace with my favorite color? or can you turn these pig teeth I pulled at the butchery into earrings? It is always a new and compelling challenge to transform the buyer’s imagination into reality. From my own imagination to the ideas of others, fabricating something and seeing it come to life at the hands of the wearer is what keeps me hammering away.

Currently online at BrittannyChanel.com and sold exclusively at Addison Handmade Vintage in Richmond, Virginia.

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