Sunflower Bouquet Bracelet

It is the very end of August and the garden is starting to let go. The tomatoes are winding down, the basil has bolted, and everything feels a little tired and golden and ready. And then you look up and there they are, three sunflowers nodding their heavy heads in the late afternoon light, completely unbothered by any of it. They have been following the sun all summer long and they are not done yet. There is something about a sunflower in late August that feels like a promise that the beautiful things are not over. They are just changing.

The Sunflower

What most people call the petals of a sunflower are not actually petals at all. They are ray florets, a ring of individual flowers whose job is simply to attract pollinators to the center. And that center is extraordinary. What looks like a single large flower is actually made up of hundreds or even thousands of tiny individual tube-shaped disc florets, each one its own complete flower, arranged in a precise spiral pattern that follows the mathematics of the Fibonacci sequence. Every one of those tiny florets, when pollinated, becomes a single sunflower seed. The sunflower is not one flower. It is a whole community of them.

Sunflowers are native to North America and were first cultivated by Indigenous peoples thousands of years ago, long before Spanish explorers carried their seeds back to Europe in the sixteenth century. They were grown as food, as medicine, and as dye. They were important before they were famous.

And then there is the sun-following behavior that gives them their name. Young sunflowers track the sun from east to west across the sky each day, driven by a growth hormone that causes one side of the stem to elongate faster than the other. Each night they reset, swinging back to face east in anticipation of the next morning. As they mature and their stems stiffen, they stop moving altogether and settle permanently facing east, which researchers have found makes them warmer in the early morning hours and therefore more attractive to pollinators looking for a warm place to land. Even when they stop following the sun, they are still working.

The Piece

Three sunflower stems rise together in a bouquet, their hand carved faces turned at slightly different angles the way real sunflowers in a garden never quite agree on the exact same direction. Each flower head is deeply textured, the ray florets carved individually and the center disc built up with tiny granules that catch the light and read as shadow from different angles. The leaves are broad and veined, pressed close to the stems in the way sunflower leaves do when they are part of something taller than themselves. At the base the three stems are gathered and hand tied with a wrapped ribbon of sterling silver wire, the kind of simple gesture that makes a handful of garden flowers into something you want to keep.

The bracelet is formed from sterling silver with a slight opening at the back so it can be slipped onto the wrist, sized to fit approximately 6.5 inches.

The Craftsmanship

• Bracelet: approximately 6.5 inches, open cuff style
• Material: sterling silver throughout, oxidized
• Closure: open cuff, slips over wrist
• Edition: one of a kind

One of a Kind

There is only one of this bracelet in the world. These three sunflowers, this particular gathering of stems, this silver ribbon holding them together: they exist once. When this piece finds its home it will never be made again exactly like this.

A Note from Tamara

Sunflowers are one of those plants that I find genuinely hard to walk past without stopping. Something about the scale of them, the way they are so completely themselves, so unhesitating about taking up space and turning their faces toward the light. I made this bracelet because I wanted to carry a little of that late summer abundance around on my wrist all year long, even in February when everything is grey and quiet and the garden is just a memory. I hope whoever wears it feels that same warmth every time they put it on.

Shipping

Your sunflower bracelet is finished, packaged safely, and will be on its way to you within 3 to 5 business days.