Shawl Pin – Wild Grape Tendril

As JUL describes her items:

The tendrils of grapes or peas are nature’s spirals. The natural grape tendrils from which these pieces were cast were collected near my studio from some wild grapes growing along the Patuxent River which runs into the Chesapeake Bay. The grapes these vines produce aren’t any you’d want to eat – birds like them. In the fall they form loose clusters of tiny pea-like fruit and the grapes turn colour from green to turquoise to indigo to mauve. When my son was four, we went walking in the fall and found a wild grapevine covered in these multi-coloured fruits the size of pearls and we arranged them in an ombre fade in the cracks of a rock – a little tribute to the art of Andy Goldsworthy (if you’ve never seen his work, google it – it’s amazing and will inspire you). Whenever I see wild grapes in the fall that look like that I think of my boy at that age lining up those grapes in colour order in the woods.