Please note: This necklace is Ready to Ship and will leave the studio in 3 - 5 business days. The chain is 18 inches in length. If you would like a different chain length you must email us with your desired length immediately after placing your order. 

If you purchase this item with any other jewel, please be aware that our jewelry is handmade to order and takes approximately 6-8 weeks to create before shipping, meaning your Ready to Ship jewel will ship with the rest of your order. This cuts down on multiple shipping costs for you, and unnecessary waste for the environment. If you would like this Ready to Ship jewel sooner than the rest of your order, please reach out to us via email. 

Named for the God Hypnos, son of Nyx, the primordial Goddess of the Night, this shimmering Mother of Pearl jewel is framed by a collage of delicate life cast bat bones. In Ancient Greece, Hypnos was known as the personification of Sleep, a gentle god who ruled over the sleeping lives of people. In sleep, our consciousness is altered, we have 'escaped' our waking lives. For some of us, sleep comes easy, for others it's fraught. In either case, we need to sleep to live, and therefore, part of our lives were believed to have been "owned" by Hypnos. Being asleep can be likened to being in a state of forgetting, an oblivion we can surrender to. It is there that we exist on the cusp between worlds, the edge of our personal Underworlds, where can meet other parts of ourselves that are hidden, our ancestors, or a place to receive divinatory messages; fleeting pieces of inspiration we can ferry back into the waking world. 

This is a talisman for the peace that sleep can bring. The hopes of the delight of a good dream, the rejuvenation a restful night of sleep can bestow. 

Bats:

Bats and their cast wing and leg bones have long been a component I’ve used in my visual library as a way of creating a personal visual language. As nocturnal creatures, I feel a kinship with their natural predilection for the night time hours, but I’m also interested in how they use sonar to ‘see’, how as a metaphor bats as liminal creatures also remind us to look closer with our other senses, a way of ‘seeing the unseen.’ It’s my hope and intention that pairing them with other chthonic imagery and myth further adds to the visual meaning I’m aiming for, creating a collage of personal ideas while also tethering these physical jeweled objects to the spirit of the bat ( and other natural objects in the case of other jewels in my collection ) and to the spirit of the myths I’m invoking.

*Details* : 

- 29 mm from top to bottom 

- Solid Sterling Silver  

- Seen on Miguel on a 20" chain

- Both pendant and chain are hand oxidized to achieve our favorite shade of stormy gray and then highlighted to reveal the bright luminous silver beneath

- Set with one 14mm Mother of Pearl cabochon 

Pearls

Have an ancient history of reverence as well as a long legacy of beauty. Pearls are formed when an external irritant, like a grain of sand, breaches the shell of an oyster or shelled mollusk. Once this irritant has gained entrance within the dark fleshy confines of the oyster, it goes to work protecting itself. If this irritant can’t be expelled, it begins to ‘bandage’ the grain, coating it with concentric rings of calcium carbonate, named ‘narce.’ Each layer that is built up forms the shape of the pearl, awash in a brilliant iridescence, a beauty born of a tiny trespass. Thusly, a pearl has at its center, the object of its creation, a foreign intruder.

I associate the pearl and its strange construction to so many things: the jellied caterpillar struggling within a chrysalis, its liquefied body form a new winged shape. An embedded star smoldering within the shell of our hearts. An ink dot, a pin prick, a moon in miniature. History, who has always loved and revered the pearl, writes that we once believed pearls were the result of lightning striking the shell and penetrating the inner skins of the oyster. A small beauty made in duress, a ‘stone’ of initiation. To possess a pearl means to own something that is hidden, sacred.

Lore has it that Cleopatra, to win a wager with Antony, dissolved a large, exquisite pearl in her drinking glass. She swallowed it in one sip. I wonder about her dreams that night.

These pearls are hand/shaped cut and therefore may have slight differences in size as well as small signs of the carver's hands along the edges. As these are hand cut and not fabricated by a machine, they can never be uniformly perfect. 

The photographs accurately portray the quality of the stones and the cuts. Please note they range in color but traditionally, some mother of pearls have a subtle iridescence which includes shades of pink, blue, and green when turned in the light as well as a light cream, pearlescent 'flash'.

***IMPORTANT***               

Visit the Policy Page to make an educated and informed purchase HERE.

If you have further questions, we are always here to serve you in a kind and timely manner: via bloodmilkjewels@gmail.com