Anne-Marie Katgely - A natural jeweler

Anne-Marie Katgely transforms the beauty of the natural world into jewelry. With her unique style, she unites stones, shells and pearls into harmonious strings of necklaces and bracelets.

 Anne-Marie was living in Val-David, Quebec when she started making jewelry in her spare time. She was inspired by aboriginal designs to create necklaces and bracelets from feathers, porcupine quills, animal horns and other natural materials. She eventually took a course to learn to create jewelry with a more refined, less craft-like style. She continues to use natural materials such as wood, feathers and fur. She also likes to collect shells and stones at the beach and make them into objects people can wear.

For Anne-Marie, the most difficult part of making jewelry is getting the creative process underway. She rarely has a fixed idea before she sits down at her jeweler's bench. As she looks over the beads and stones in her collection, she selects the ones that appear most beautiful. Then the creative force that lies deep within her starts to guide her. Carefully observing the colors, textures and shapes of the objects before her, she fashions necklaces and bracelets that bring the raw materials into harmony.

Anne-Marie is always looking for new elements for her jewelry. She once bought a musical score by Saint-Saëns and lacquered it to a wooden dowel. She cut the dowel into beads and created jewelry with the most interesting sequences of notes. She's used the same process with the insides of mailing envelopes that she finds particularly attractive.

Although Anne-Marie rarely follows other artists, she likes the Art nouveau style and particularly the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany, with his emphasis on flowers and plant life.

Never one to follow the crowd, Anne-Marie believes you shouldn't simply make art that's sellable. It's more important to create from your feelings and your inspiration. She feels her personality comes out through her jewelry.

You can see a selection of Anne-Marie's work at her blog.