Home Away From Home
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Presently, more and more time is being spent away from the domestic sphere. Even women, who were the most closely connected with the home, are not as engaged in domesticity like past generations. However, people still tend to desire a comfortable home despite being absent from it for increasingly longer periods of time. With this removal from the home, the desire to decorate moves to the mobile self as the area available for decoration shrinks from the expanse of the home to the personal space of the individual.
These neckpieces, reminiscent of traditional home decor, are inspired by the urge to ornament living space. The techniques for creating the pieces originally come from a time when women were not only responsible for the embellishment of the household, but ideally were part of the decor themselves. Through the work, the wearer becomes ornamented as though they were the interior of a dwelling. By decorating the body, the need for adorning the multiple places a person inhabits is eliminated.
The value of a woman's responsibility as a home maker was at its height in the 19th century, but as the years passed, the significance of women's domestic identities declined severely. Consequently, even as society becomes more accepting of the diverse roles women can fill, the activities once termed women's work still tends to be frowned upon as kitsch. By turning home decor into jewelry, which western culture tends to view as more valuable, the pieces attempt to re-establish the value the ornamentation of the home and women's work once had and, at the same time, adapt traditional decorative objects used in the home to the way society functions currently.
These neckpieces, reminiscent of traditional home decor, are inspired by the urge to ornament living space. The techniques for creating the pieces originally come from a time when women were not only responsible for the embellishment of the household, but ideally were part of the decor themselves. Through the work, the wearer becomes ornamented as though they were the interior of a dwelling. By decorating the body, the need for adorning the multiple places a person inhabits is eliminated.
The value of a woman's responsibility as a home maker was at its height in the 19th century, but as the years passed, the significance of women's domestic identities declined severely. Consequently, even as society becomes more accepting of the diverse roles women can fill, the activities once termed women's work still tends to be frowned upon as kitsch. By turning home decor into jewelry, which western culture tends to view as more valuable, the pieces attempt to re-establish the value the ornamentation of the home and women's work once had and, at the same time, adapt traditional decorative objects used in the home to the way society functions currently.