2022 Special Edition Helsinki

“This is a series of ten special edition brooches. I wanted to make pieces where, on a mid-summer day under the bright blue sky, water is tickling my toes and some dragonflies are flying about. Summer in Finland.

I’m collecting all different kinds of wood for my work for about twenty years now. Mainly bigger and smaller branches from different types of trees. Making jewellery pieces from branches is every time a question of getting the puzzle right.

I love the challenge of working with wood in this way; copying a piece exactly becomes impossible. Some of the branches end up being about being a branch. Just like any branch picked up from the ground. I have made branch brooches since my first jewellery collections (Substralia 2004). Recently I decided to make every year at least one.

Since 2013, I have signed my necklaces and brooches with two little blue dots: I had been looking for a good way to sign my pieces a long time. I didn’t want a stamp like goldsmiths do. When I made some insect pieces for the Curiosity Collection in 2013 it gave me the idea of having a pair of insect eyes on the pieces. That became my signature, two dots, for the double T in my name, in my color, the sky blue, the Terhi blue.” — Terhi Tolvanen