The phrase "dinosaur blood" is used in the agricultural world to express appreciation for the ability of petroleum products to power machinery and do work for the farmer. Few are those who have experienced with their own working hours what heavy machinery can make more easily possible, such as the moving of dirt or the harvesting and threshing of a field of wheat, which would require so much hard physical human labor were this energy not available, and fewer even yet are those who have also done that work with only their own strength. It is as if the powerful bodies of the dinosaurs were harnessed in the fields.
Civilization has built its towering structure upon the possibility of few feeding the many. Too little thought is given to the uniqueness of this gift from the ancient past; we do not distinguish between frivolous use and an enduring worthwhile creation. We do not sufficiently concern ourselves with the sustainability of our relations with the planet and its energies.
These handcrafted jewels display dinosaur blood and are offered as a
means of encouraging reflection upon what we take for granted, and upon
the quality and extension of the human future that we wish to prevail.
They are symbol of this industrial world's perilous and utter dependence:
one among our many actions whose wisdom need be reconsidered — as
we degrade the land, the sea, the climate, as we exhaust the Earth that
is the only home we shall ever know. Yellow and black gold, rough-hewn beauty
combined with ugliness, unnerving, to be worn by we who sense the reality
and consequence of overshoot,
as we restrain that old unbounded faith in the market and technological
cleverness of man — even if we can now but seek the vision for
a new Way. They are symbol of the Great Change that will be required —whether
it be a journey through forced darkness or inspired light hopefully ours
to determine.
[Click following images to proceed, enlarge, and close.]
The jewels begin smelted and hand milled from 14 kt
gold, then are hand fashioned and forged onto the glass tubes. The dinosaur
blood is from Mexico prior to entering the refinery stream at Tampico,
Tamaulipas, with an APIG of 35, and was formed approximately 90,000,000
years ago. Manuel Arreola Mendez is the primary goldsmith and Steve Morningthunder
the glassworker. Background cloth for the pendants is hand spun and woven
cotton from Upasana Design Studios, Auroville, Tamil Nadu, India, and
for the earring detail, Russian cotton.
