Reversible magnolia / monarch butterfly necklace inspired by the box of butterflies and childhood memories sent to Rachel by Iris de la Torre as part of the ‘From Our Own Correspondence’ commission.
Materials: Brass, resin, paint, ceramic and freshwater pearl.
Pendant dimensions: 120 x 70 mm, necklace length: 42.5 cm.
Rachel Larkins is a freelance maker based on the south coast of England. Since 2015 she has focussed a previously multi-disciplinary practice primarily within the field of jewellery making. She applies skills and processes gathered since her twenties, working in the field of collectors toys (automata and dolls) to make wearable pieces which reference historical artefacts and preservation; often encapsulating hand sculpted and painted forms within resin. Rachel has always been drawn to objects behind glass, perhaps in recognition that someone from the past has preserved those things considered precious and ephemeral; mourning jewellery holding hair; bell jars holding birds, insects or dolls; dioramas and ships in bottles. The wearable pieces she makes are influenced by the intimacy and hidden stories of small scale miniatures as well as by folklore and fairy tales. She works from a studio in a village near the New Forest. Following an early training in Textile Art, she graduated with an MA in Sequential Design/ Illustration from the University of Brighton in 2013. She has exhibited regularly in the UK and abroad, creating and selling work for private and public collections for more than twenty years.