Somewhere on the forest floor right now, two ants are working. They have been working since before you woke up and they will still be working after you go to sleep, moving along their routes with the calm efficiency of creatures who have never once questioned whether what they are doing matters. It matters enormously. The forest they are tending has no idea how much it owes them.
The Ant
Ants are not the first pollinator that comes to mind when most people think about how a forest reproduces itself. But they have been doing this quiet essential work for millions of years, moving from flower to flower in search of nectar, carrying pollen on their bodies as they go, visiting the low growing native plants that other pollinators overlook. Some plants have evolved extrafloral nectaries specifically to attract ants, small nectar producing glands on their stems and leaves that offer a reward to any ant willing to make a regular visit. The ant gets a meal. The plant gets a pollinator and a protector. Everyone benefits.
And then there is the seed planting. Myrmecochory is the mutualistic relationship between ants and the spring wildflowers of the eastern forest, one of the quietest and most extraordinary partnerships in the natural world. Trilliums, bloodroot, violets, and spring beauty all produce seeds with a small fatty nutritious appendage called an elaiosome attached to them. Ants carry these seeds back to their nests, eat the elaiosome, and discard the seed itself in their underground compost, already tucked into exactly the right kind of rich disturbed soil to germinate. The ant gets a meal. The plant gets planted in precisely the right spot. This is how wildflower forests spread. This is how they have always spread. Two small creatures, one small transaction, repeated millions of times across the forest floor every spring.
Alma and Aria are doing this work right now, on their leaves, going wherever you go.
The Piece
Each earring is a single forest leaf pressed directly into sterling silver, the veins and edges of the real leaf transferred permanently into the metal so that every line you see is an actual record of an actual leaf that existed. No two leaves are ever identical, which means Alma's leaf and Aria's leaf are subtly different from each other in the way that all leaves in a forest are subtly different from each other. At the top of each leaf a small hand carved ant clings on, her three body segments and six legs detailed at this tiny scale, antennae alert, completely at home on the surface beneath her. A small flower charm hangs at the bail of each earring where the French wire meets the leaf, a tiny extra detail at the top that feels like finding something unexpected on a walk.
Alma and Aria dangle approximately 2.5 inches from the ear wire and are light enough to wear all day.
The Craftsmanship
- Earrings: approximately 2.5 inches from ear wire
- Material: sterling silver throughout, oxidized
- Detail: real leaf impression, hand carved ant
- Style: French wire dangle earrings
- Edition: one of a kind
One of a Kind
There is only one Alma and only one Aria. These two leaves, these two ants, this particular pair going about their work together: they exist once. When they find their person they will never be made again exactly like this.
A Note from Tamara
I made this collection because I think ants are one of the most underappreciated creatures in the native garden and I wanted to change that one piece of jewelry at a time. Alma means soul and Aria means song, and I gave them those names because the forest has both of those things and neither of them would exist without the ants who tend it. I hope whoever wears them feels a little of that same quiet purpose every time they put them on. The work that matters most is often the work that nobody notices. Alma and Aria notice. They always have.
Shipping
Your Alma and Aria are finished, packaged safely, and will be on their way to you within 3 to 5 business days.