Shelby Goldsmith ’14

shelbygoldsmith.com

@shelby.goldsmith

Inspired and informed by sentimental jewelry throughout history, Shelby offers her contemporary take. Shelby utilizes a dark, limited color palette of stones and oxidized metal to create modern mourning jewelry. Moving away from the morbid motifs common in memento mori (“remember death”) jewelry, her most recent body of work employs the letter “X” as a non-traditional symbol of death. Derived from the 1932 film Scarface, where a cinematic “X” motif is used as a harbinger of death. An “X” appears as each character meets their death. The shape provides a departure point from which to design from, by endlessly multiplying and manipulating it. The finished work abstracts the dark context behind it, often utilizing asymmetry and movement to create elegant jewelry that is playful and dynamic. Shelby works from her home studio in Maine, and is also trained as a death doula.