Throughout our collaboration, we have often looked to nature for inspiration. In seed clusters, shell formations, and flower buds, for instance, there are carefully organized parts which are arranged beautifully and made up of numerous, seemingly identical, but unique units. These exquisite structures lead us into new ways of envisioning a necklace, for example, both three-dimensionally and texturally. Many of our brooches are like a collection of fragments. Not necessarily of literal fragments (say, like shards of pottery) but more like “conceptual fragments,”– like a piece of music, a chapter from a story, an ingredient from a cuisine, or an element of a language. At some point, however, we let the references subside a bit and allow the color, abstract patterns and form to lead us. The work feels complete to us when the balance of elements – abstract and imagistic — comes into focus in some unusual way.