Kester Black was established in 2009 by up and coming fashion designer Anna Ross. While studying a Bachelor of Fashion Design at Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand, Ross realised her flair and passion for designing jewellery, and so Kester Black was born.
Now based in Melbourne, Ross creates her pieces from her studio, an old converted prison, supplying stockists throughout both Australia and New Zealand.
Producing two collections each year, all of the jewellery produced is made from the highest quality materials and workmanship, utilising materials such as white gold, silver, minerals and hand carved wood.
A sub branch of her collection Maiden Voyage, comes the glamour and spray-painted goodness of Edition X and a limited range of carved animals. There’s only the carved wooden animals; none of the geometric shapes or polished silver animals and mineral rocks Anna Ross the designer has previously delved into before. I like the new take on the wooden crafted pieces since I have wondered previous what colours suited these three animals in particular. Certainly I wondered whether a brown bear would be better than the carved polar bear already available.
The same basic design as Kester Black’s carved animals, the special gold range from Edition X looks a little better for the three specially chosen animals: bear, horse and cow. The bear looks the best since the basic design is versatile enough to be coloured brown or polar bear with a change in paint colour. There’s a gentle brushed effect from the top of the bear leaving it more looking like a honey coloured but the golden paws with neat, sharp little claws look really cool.
I never realised how large the carved animal necklaces were before I saw this photograph. For $80, I would feel like I’m getting my money’s worth in terms of the large and folk carved animals as well as the strong pleated rope necklace. As of late I prefer longer necklaces as opposed to tight ones around my neck and have them drape around me natural curves and clothes. That, and I am a sucker for Peter Pan collars so the models looks like perfection in my eyes wearing two of my favourite fashion items.
When I was a young child, I always hoped at age twelve to begin to carve things such as sculptures of animals and motifs. That childhood dream ended when I was aged ten and I began to play basketball instead and then I ended quitting as I approached my seventeenth birthday and I would need to play against older women. Designer of Kester Black, Anna Ross does it better than I could have ever dreamed with the rough-sculpted lines contributing to the overall soft curves of the animals, I fell in love some years ago with the necklaces when I spotted them in a magazine, most likely Frankie.
Kester Black or rather, the designer of Kester Black, New Zealander Anna Ross has been gracious enough to bless us with another collection from her jewellery label in the spirit of silver, recognisable patterns and words as well as raw crystal. There's a more teenage and best friends appeal in this collection, which I was a little affronted and let down by but I do rather like the use of unusual crystal glimmering in colours for each cut surface. This collection, presumably for 2012 in the Spring/ Summer season has a greater focus for silver as well as clean white enamel and pure, semi-precious stones such as pearls and crystal.
I've never really payed a lot of attention to commemorative jewellery for platonic friendships- it's all very elementary school age and juvenile, but if you are that way inclined then at the very least you could buy a metal you can clean after tarnishing. These 'Forever Friends' rings come with a flat face and fancy scripted writing fit for two people, may as a parting gift and a memento/ reminder to keep in contact with one another. My mother and her best friend, whom I refer to fondly as my Aunt have been friends since high school in Malaysia despite my mother now living in Australia and my Auntie Gwen living in Vancouver.
My second favourite piece in the collection and favourite necklace is this piece above, known affectionately as the 'Northern Lights Flower Necklace' in the shape of a folded tulip made of silver and a pollen centre of a crystal. I have seen this affect achieved with Dichrotic glass, but even if this is a lower grade quality type of crystal quartz I am still drawn to the mysticism of this piece as well as the pure white and blue tones of the stone. When worn and seen from afar it can look like a rather simple pendant but when inspected more closely with gentle fingertips it's prepossessing nature can be discovered by any person.
My first choice of piece in the Thick as Thieves collection by Kester Black is of course an ornate ring with thick silver band and face inscribed detail and another crystal of unusual colour at the centre. It reminds me so much of cheap movie affects and lasers shot from the foreheads of fortune tellers and psychics- it must be the strong floral petal and claw setting around this jewel. I would love to see more fine detail in the inscribed shoulder detail on the ring and the lines brought out by the use of oxidation to highlight the design.
My personal preference of the Northern Lights Flower Necklace over the Pearl Flower Necklace is more to do with my love for the quirky, weird and unusual. I have a pearl necklace and bracelet gifted to my for my eighteenth birthday from my boyfriend's mother. It's a nice combination, the silver and the pearl but still I admire the twinkling of the crystal stone held in the petals of an open flower and should you be desperate enough, it's a secret place for you to put your chewed gum- thought I would personally discourage this and scowl at anyone eager to attempt such a manoeuvre.
We've seen nuggets of stone before which chose to imitate raw crystal and stone alike from Kester Black but this collection has a more polished and bubbly effect to it. Many of the necklaces whether they be long or or small little chunks have been named 'Mother Earth' in reference to the life giving nature and beauty of out planet (some speculation from myself). It's not really the Kester Black style that I've come to know and love- I adore the roughness and edge of raw crystal and oddly cut stones instead with oil slick colours bouncing off the edges od her pieces.
