Riti jewellery inspired by Taste

With the semester at college coming to an end, December is the season of reflection for me. As a teacher, end semester juries help me reflect on the way I taught, the projects that we did in class, outcomes and student’s learning. I had a lot of fun with my first year students to whom I taught Design fundamentals. We achieved great success on one particular assignment we did on Sensory design. This post is about how that assignment inspired me to make Riti jewellery.

With my students, my initial plan was to make them do the sound to form exercise. You can find a similar one described in the Vaseegara necklace post. However, due to lack of time and a plethora of festival related holidays, I changed it to a Food to shape exercise that they could do at home. The objective was to eat  – taste, smell, and see a food item and then represent it using colours, shapes and texture as a 2D composition. You can see some of their attempts at the end of this post.  I wanted to see if I can take it further and convert the shapes into a tangible object. Thus was born Riti jewellery inspired by Taste.

Riti jewellery inspired by Taste

For my experiment, I choose three items of food. I chose a cup of tea, a gravy dish with (Kashmiri mirch) red chillies and a floral and berry smoothie.

Riti jewellery inspired by Tea

15th December was international Tea day. In honour of that, the first necklace of this post is Tea inspired. I can’t stand even the smell of coffee so I drink tea. I can drink it as chai, black, green or with some exotic flavouring added to it. In my necklace I have depicted many moods, states and fancies of tea. Can you see the bitter-sour taste of the plain brew, the aroma and golden glow of masala chai and the dregs of powders that cling to the cup long after you have drunk it?

The Theneer (tea in Tamil) is a necklace made of glass beads, dyed/plated crystals, seed beads and a glitter resin focal. It is asymmetrical and hooks at the back with a flower clasp. The earrings are bead drops with little leaf style studs.

Jewellery inspired by Kashmiri Mirch

Look for a spicy flavoursome pairing with tea on the internet and you will come across chillies. I love a good Samosa, a vegetable cutlet or hot pakoras with tea any day. Red chilly and turmeric are crucial to south Indian vegetarian cooking. It goes into our gravies like Sambhar and rasam, our vegetable stir fries, stews, etc.  Since green chillies give me ulcer, red chillies are a staple at home. Of all the chillies that I have tasted, I like Kashmiri mirch the best. It is a bright red in colour and is not as hot as the other chillies. Thus it makes the food look good without upsetting my stomach.

Obviously, the food we make using these chillies isn’t this red in colour for that would look scary and unappetising.  It would be a duller reddish brown. However, that is not the best colour to make jewellery in. Hence I made a necklace in reds, red-browns, orange, and yellow. Apart from colour, I used a combination of textures to bring out the heat. The smooth lines in the pendant balance the chunky faceted crystals to give a wholesome feeling. Just a sprig of curry leaf is missing here.

The Kashmiri necklace is made of dyed faceted crystal beads, gotta fabric beads and a textural faux enamel pendant. The earrings are beaded drops that hang from leaf studs.

Jewellery inspired by Smoothie

After foods that taste dull and bitter, bright and hot, I bring you something soft and cool. Yes, an ice cream milkshake/ smoothie garnished with berries. Like I mentioned in my Cocktail earrings post, I do not drink or eat anything cold. But I like looking at frozen food and cool drinks for inspiration. Particularly those that are made using exotic ingredients like edible flowers, textured berries, herbs, and garnished with nuts.

This last necklace has dyed jade beads, lampwork glass along with a faux druzy pendant. All the three necklaces are sold. 

So how did you like the necklaces? Now that I have shown you pieces inspired by items from three different meal courses – pre-appetiser, main course and dessert did they give you a feeling of having an indulgent meal?

Here are some students compositions – taste to shape exercise in Elements of design