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.
Available here at Edition X Jewels.
