₪₪₪
- (verb) (-ia,nōhia,-ngia) to sit, stay, remain, settle, dwell, live, inhabit, reside, occupy, located. 2. (verb) remain - sometimes used before other nouns or verbs to indicate a state over a period of time. Ka Noho - 3. after quite a long time - an idiomatic use to indicate a passage of time before something happened. To rule or reign, family ancestors. Vestiges, ruins, chaos, echo, lived.
In mythology, it's often after a destructive event and chaos that one restructures, is reborn and grows. Breaking a cycle, a spell or a prophecy, we make way for something else. Something different.
Ancient stones fascinate me because that's what they're all about. They evoke a past time and a past experience, teachings and wisdoms that have disappeared and yet endure. They have given way to other civilizations, but continue to pass on the stories of the past. This historical and archaeological notion inspires me enormously.
I've always been captivated by the cultural wealth buried for centuries in the earth, expressed in stone, clay, gold, sand and many other materials. In museums, it's the fragments of pottery and carved stone, the snippets of gold leaf and metal ornaments, or the friezes and decorative designs half-faded by time that arouse my curiosity.
During my travels, I've surveyed the remains, temples, historic alleyways and lands of lost civilizations. I've immersed myself in the mysterious and bewildering atmosphere that reigns in these places steeped in history, covered in foliage, gigantic roots or sand, with nature always majestically reclaiming its rights.
In stones that have been dismantled and demolished by time, I see a veritable treasure trove of history. I find beauty in raw rock, a natural material, and in the fact that the same fragment of object or stone could have survived the ages, or even existed since the dawn of time.
In the foreign languages and their manual transcriptions, as in the motifs, representations and decorative elements, I find a lost spirituality, history and ethnic art form. Once precisely defined, today's half-faded motifs and inscriptions give way to mystery and intrigue.
It's around historical relics that I wanted to express myself. Thus, Noho is a line born of a meeting between past and present, between chaos and spirituality, between ruins and wealth, between rough and elegance. I wanted to play with the structure and rough texture of stones, with the beauty and preciousness of gold and silver, and with the mystery of imperfect, erased ethnic motifs, for elegant, refined pieces that in turn span the centuries and history.
My cultural references are Hawaiian, Cambodian, Greek and Roman. It's in these countries, teeming with ancient temples, spiritual mixes, nature and architectural relics, that I draw my main inspiration.
Noho, in Hawaiian as well as in Maori, means the action of residing, dwelling, inhabiting. Derived from Ka Noho, evoking the time that passes before an event occurs. Hawaiians also celebrate their ancestors, part of the spirituality of their culture; a notion integrated into the collection.
The Rosetta Stone and the deciphering of its foreign languages have been a great inspiration for the jewels in the Noho collection. Even today, the Rosetta Stone symbolizes the key that opened the door to a deeper understanding of ancient and mysterious civilizations. It represents the power of knowledge and interdisciplinary collaboration, as well as the ability to overcome linguistic and cultural barriers to access the wisdoms of the past. It embodies the preservation of the world's cultural heritage, and the interpretation of our shared history.
Noho was also inspired by the friezes of Greek motifs, which played an important role in the art and architecture of antiquity. Their strategic placement helped guide the viewer's gaze and create an immersive atmosphere in the architectural space. Although their main function was to embellish structures, they nevertheless had an important significance. Symbolically, Greek friezes often represented the ideal of beauty, harmony and balance, concepts fundamental to Greek philosophy and art.
Invasive nature has also been very inspiring, as it reclaims deserted places and rebirths ancient remains in all their beauty. Like the Angkor temple in Cambodia, it grows roots and foliage exponentially. Roots replace doorframes and pillars, branches become roofs, and its wild grasses invade the various rooms. Faced with this imposing force of the natural landscape, one can only wonder how many centuries have passed for nature to transform space in this way.
Working with gold and silver, two raw and natural precious metals, is my medium of choice when it comes to making art objects with a story and a purpose. In addition to their incredible physical properties, these two noble metals have been at the heart of civilizations since the dawn of time, able to withstand the test of time without losing their beauty or value, and have also been at the center of trade and spiritual legends, both symbolizing different aspects of the world and its energies.
Just like our stones, our relics and our ornaments, metals mature, take on a patina, perhaps peel off, but will be with you for decades to come, passing on in turn the stories and wisdom you carry with you.
"Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed."