The animal collection was inspired by the messages I wanted to give to my two daughters; Mimi and Orla.
I was fascinated by the idea of being able to give a piece of jewellery that in some way emboldened the wearer.
Mimi used to say ‘I love you to unicorn world and back’, which made me think of a line from Lewis Carrol’s Through the Looking Glass. The unicorn says to Alice, ‘If you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you.’ The idea that if you could believe in a unicorn you must be able to believe in yourself, seemed like a powerful one and so the idea for the unicorn necklace and bangle was born.
I then started researching other spirit animals and their meanings and was influenced by naive Scandinavian art and animals drawn with simple black outlines as I wanted the animals to have a clean, modern, almost industrial look.
I eventually came up with five animals – the Rabbit, the Orca Whale, the Hummingbird, the Dala Horse and the Unicorn.
After reading about their meanings from Native American websites I tried to find the essence of each piece and the following meanings became attached to them.
The Dala Horse : Be Strong
The Rabbit: Lucky Bunny
The Orca Whale : Always By Your Side
The Unicorn: Believe in You
The Hummingbird: Beat Your Wings And Fly.
These five animals now form the Animal Collection.
Rachel
