Made Her Think jewelry designer Meredith Kahn is so much more than a purveyor of pretty bits and baubles.
The Williamsburg-based designer is a storyteller of sorts weaving tales and history into her jewelry the same way a musician or writer would into their work. “I’ve always been drawn to things with history,” says Kahn. “Things that have a heavy emphasis on the meaning behind what they are and what they represent.”
For inspiration she looks to the mystical energy of Mexico’s Day of the Dead celebration as well as the Victorian mourning jewelry and the Latin phrase “Memento Mori,” which means “remember you are mortal.”
By combining this imagery, she constructs fun, feminine, edgy pieces of jewelry with a unique spiritual quality. Much of her work consists of skulls, horseshoes, hearts, wings, shields, birds and pearls either in clusters or separately as a stand-alone piece.
While some of the individual elements are used as symbols – the pearls symbolize tears for example – others are more forthright (such as her shield pendants with the words “Love or Perish” from Henry David Thoreau craved on them), but all warrant a closer look and beg to be worn time and again.
