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Rasheda Tennant works on a customised ring of silver and brass   "My pieces have to tell a story," says Rasheda Tennant, a young Jamaican jeweller, who said she combines her clients' personal choices, their stories with an eclectic mix of media, colours, and design. The jewellery that she creates is a statement - literally and figuratively. Tennant said creating is in her DNA. Her grandfather and father were woodcarvers and she, from as far as she can remember, spent her childhood and teenage years in their workshop, tinkering with the tools, carving, and hammering wood. "I was always helping my father; I used to accompany him whenever he went to the sites. I helped him in his workshop," Tennant said. She told The Sunday Gleaner that the training was hands-on and on the job. "That's how I have these muscles," Tennant said, as she flexed her chiselled biceps, shaped by hammers, nails, saws - not your typical doll-totting girl. The play th...

Jewellery designed by Damaris Mayne Jewellers get inspiration from natural material “God is really another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style. He just goes on trying other things,” once said Pablo Picasso, epitomising the vastness and out-of-the-box creative material that nature offers. “I am a 3D thinker, and when I was at school (Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts), the logical gravitation was towards jewellery design,” says Damaris Mayne. Mayne, a fine jeweller who works with noble metals and precious stones, started out designing gold jewellery, but over the years, she shifted to experimenting with more natural materials. “The transition to natural materials happened after the prices of precious metals shot up,” she said. Necessity is the mother of all inventions, it is said, which in Mayne’s case, helped in carving a niche for her as she started creating earthy designs. “I use a variety of materials ­ co...