Creating a New Collection: The Work of Luana Coonen

From the desk of Roz Eberhard, Director and Curator at Eclectic Artisans.

EA. Your work is heavily influenced by elements from the natural world. When embarking on designing for a new collection, do you undertake research field trips or is it more an organic process drawn from memories.

LC. I’m constantly on ‘field trips’. A majority of my off-time is spent in the outdoors, either hiking, camping, on my stand-up paddle board or backpacking. Yet inspiration comes to me at all times: when in the studio, while out on a hike, sometimes right before I fall asleep. Yet the true inspiration often comes to me not during these active times, it’s when I’m just sitting dwelling on the pattern of how a leaf grows, or watching a bug crawl up a stick. Those quiet moments when I’m just sitting watching a view is where the big ideas come from, and all the designs sprout from there.

EA. Are you a sketcher, photographer or CAD design artist?

LC. Defiantly a sketcher, thought I’ve watched the world modernize around me, I pride myself on being an old-school goldsmith. With that comes lots of time with a pencil, sketchbook and ruler. My studio is covered in little drawings of jewelry I plan to make.

EA. Where do you find the natural components that you add to your work

LC. I used to gather all my natural specimens out in the field myself, but now that my work is fairly well known, I receive almost half of my treasures from fans, friends and clients throughout the year (with little notes like “I thought you’d like this!”). The boxes often contain snakeskin, colorful bird feathers, dried flower petals and the like. So now my treasures come from both me and the great unknown.

EA. Many jewellers rely on the process of creating samples from non-precious metals to refine their designs. Is this something you do?

LC. Yes, absolutely. Though most of my finished jewelry is in gold and silver, I still work with copper often to flush out the details: the form, size, shape and how the mechanisms will work. Copper is actually a lovely material to work with (it’s very soft & malleable). It’s nice to have a material which I can work so quickly with and not have to craft carefully like gold. New ideas often sprout when you just let your hands do what they are good at.

EA. What is your favourite technique or material to work with?

LC. Soldering is by far my favorite technique (working with a torch to ‘weld’ the metal components together). It feels like baking- if all the components are correct, something beautiful rises before your eyes. Though I am the one in control, I always feel like I’m watching magic unfurl in front of me, a bit like alchemy. And my favorite material…. rose petals, does that count?

EA. Do you ever feel that you need to follow trends when creating a collection?

. Absolutely not- I often resist trends. I’d prefer to make designs which stand the test of time, ‘classics’ I refer to them.

I do not like to constantly update the aesthetic of my line if it goes out of trend. With that said, I’ve seen designs I make come into trend and sell better than in the past, but I just keep making old and new designs regardless of what’s happening in the world. I’m a bit stubborn like that.

EA. What was the biggest risk you ever took with a design?

LC. Ha! Probably when I was still in art school, learning to be a goldsmith. I would approach a project and people would say “you can’t do that/make that” but I would try anyway. Sometimes it would work and I’d discover a new approach, or sometimes I’d crush or burn something. And that’s how learning happens.