Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

First I wanted to say that my online store will finally open in September and a good percentage of the things I’ve been posting recently, especially in the jewelry realm, will be up for sale after so many years of people asking. Thanks for everyone who’s been supportive and patient. I’m pretty self-motivated, but I might not have been as enthusiastic were it not for the kind words of both friends and strangers on the internet.

Now here is something that I’m quite excited about!

I am doing a series of one-off rings (as in each one is unique and different) built around meteorites. Real ones. As in these bits of metal and rock floated around in space and eventually fell to Earth as shooting stars. For space nerds like me the idea of walking around with something that dropped from beyond our atmosphere is profound. The small iron meteorite in this ring is from a witnessed fall in May 1516 (collected about fifty years ago — the fall was gigantic and quite a lot of pieces of the Nantan meteorite are around) in Nantan, China. As these things go it’s a pretty “common” meteorite, but it still feels amazing to me. I actually also have a small Martian meteorite that’s mindblowing. That is, long ago Mars suffered a massive impact, huge, and bits of Mars got blasted into space. Eventually some of those bits intersected Earth’s orbit and fell to the surface of our planet where they were found and identified. Wow. A piece of Mars. I’m saving it until my skills are better though.

For this first piece I mounted the meteorite, which is completely unaltered, in a cast lead-free and body-safe pewter ring that I have carved into the shape of an asteroid field with a Haunebu II Nazi-era UFO flying through the middle of it (the part of the ring that sits over the palm). Here are a few pictures of it on my little finger. I think it’s about a size 12 but I’m not sure exactly because I’ve done the sizing a little oval to make the meteorite sit nicely.

And a couple off my finger too.

I can’t wait to create more in this series. I’m doing some broaches and amulets and trinkets in addition to the rings, but the rings are the main focus. This is just the first and I’m really excited to build up the experience to create pieces that do the centerpieces justice.