Necklaces

Designer Interview: Ishita Ghosh

1) What is your personal name, business name, website, and location?

My name is Ishita Ghosh (I am from India; I came to the United States as a student some twenty years ago). My business name is gianani (named after a medieval lost city). My website is http://www.gianani.com/ and I am currently living in Missouri.

Earrings made with ceramic artbeads by Gaea and bayong wood.

2) What kind of jewelry do you make? What types of materials do you prefer? What kind of artbeads do you use?

I make two completely different kinds of jewelry. On the one hand, I make one-of-a-kind earrings many of which are big and bold. My earrings are not meant to be mere accessories for necklaces. I make them to stand on their own. For the earrings I like creating contrasting textures and tones and to this end use a wide variety of materials including natural stones , wood, crystals, shells, copper, brass, niobium, and silver, especially Thai silver. I have a strong dislike for conventional valuation of materials as 'precious' or 'base' letting the design determine what is appropriate and often I cannot resist combining something conventionally deemed 'precious' with something deemed common or 'base' . In the last several years I have been strongly inspired by artbeads, especially ceramic artbeads. I use artist-made beads as focal beads and then use other beads to provide counterpoints. I am particular about every component of the earrings – I give as much attention to the pins and wires and the earwires as the beads in the designing process.

Besides earrings I make wood pendants with miniature paintings....

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