Made From Vantablack and Meteorite: LUCY by Ore
One ring connected to the cosmos
Made with Vantablack (the pigment so dark, it traps 99.96% of incoming light), meteorite and gold-plated microcircuitry, LUCY is much more than any other super-polished, sphere-shaped ring. Each ring is connected to its wearer’s own white dwarf star and vibrates when that star reaches its zenith. The “magical ceremony” (happening multiple times a week) encourages the wearer to pause, center and reconnect with the space around them. Thanks to the subtle vibrations and pulsing olivine crystals (etched from Pallasite Meteorite) embedded in the 18-carat gold, the wearer gets transported to somewhere truly unique—a space and time only for them.
Crafted in England, LUCY was designed by Tess O’Leary and Daljit Singh. Their aim was to converge the rare elements so that they form an emotional connection with the “custodian,” as well as with their place in space and time Singh explains that they wanted “to see how far we could use technology to foster long-lasting emotional relationships, taking people back to the natural world.”
Who will wear LUCY? “Adventurers,” adds Singh.
LUCY is made by Hatton Garden jewelers Toby McLellan and Tomek Ciosmak along with Daniel Hirschmann (whose work has been displayed at the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA, the Design Museum in London and more). The team also consisted of several scientists, including Surrey Nanosystems, Dr Roberto Trotta, a Theoretical Cosmologist and Senior Lecturer in Astrophysics at Imperial College London.
Singh believes this combination of talent was key in designing LUCY, “We wanted to directly challenge perceptions of how luxury can be understood, experienced and imagined in a digital context, and critically, to explore how new values can be imbued into materials and technology. We needed to work with specialist scientists to identify an event with the right tempo that we could draw the data from.”
Legacy is LUCY’s next challenge. From different forms to lifespan, LUCY’s makers are still deciding whether the piece comes to a hard stop or if it will get reprogrammed for future generations. Singh says, “There should be a gradual discovery—a longer relationship with objects—so they become portals.”
For the next design, Singh is looking to the stars for inspiration and says, “Our next piece is more geared to men and will track black hole formations—when stars supernova. Something that happens around 350 times per annum. From there we will come down to Earth and look at migration: the highest altitude—Himalayan Goose, the longest—could be the Grey/Blue Whales, the Arctic Tern or the Monarch Butterfly.”
LUCY is available to order now (£35,000). It can be customized with different precious metal cores and it also comes as a pendant.
Images courtesy of Ore
