To be wearing Nora Rochel’s jewellery is to live inside a secret garden. Tiny blossoms bloom hidden inside tiny caves, strange flowers spring forth from unassuming surfaces.

 

 

Unaware of their own beauty, these curious flowers and seeds become containers for undiscovered purposes – can they cure the common cold? Could they cure cancer? Quietly growing, these intriguing pieces are full of vitality, exploring cycles of growth, bloom, and decay.

 

 

Nora Rochel asks all these questions but leaves the answers floating. Her most recent show at the Gallery Almstadt in Munich titled “If you don’t believe in the afterlife, look closer some spring day at a dead tree on the forest floor” appealed to viewers to leave their preconceptions at the door and to open their eyes.

What I find so seductive about these pieces are their surfaces – a curious blend of rough and smooth, raw and heavily oxidised. They are utterly tactile, delicate and strong. The spaces contained within the forms are hollow but not empty; they are containers of promise.

And there are flowers.
{At this point I can hear my PhD supervisor say “don’t get stuck on flowers” – but I can’t help it; here I am. I love flowers.}

 

 

 

 

Nora completed her studies at the University of Applied Science in Pforzheim, Germany, and spent an exchange semester at the prestigious Kookmin University in Seoul, Korea. She has won numerous awards, including first prize at the Cheongju International Craft Biennale.

She has used Fairtrade gold and silver for all her pieces since April 2011.

 

You can find more of Nora’s flowers and seeds on her website, and on her Facebook page.

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With thanks to Nora for kindly sharing her work here.