The Back Matters: Because Art Flips

THE FRONT

Cleaned up and carrying the texture, flow, and movement of the design.

THE BACK

Before cleanup — waiting for the same attention it takes to make the front beautiful.

The Back Matters: Because Art Flips

A picture says a thousand words.
Sometimes, though, a picture makes you stop and ask a question.
As I was working on this new wax pendant, I had already spent a great deal of time sculpting the front. The flowing lines, texture, movement, and organic shape were beginning to feel right.
Then I turned it over.
Holy moly, that's ugly. 😂
Not because the pendant was wrong. The back simply hadn't received the attention the front had yet.
And that's when I started thinking about something I've understood for a very long time:
Art flips.
For more than 20 years, I've finished the backs of my pendants.
Why?
Because jewelry moves.
It twists.
It turns.
It shifts when you wear it.
At some point, the back is going to become the front.
And when that happens, I don't want someone wearing one of my pieces to see a flat piece of metal with a logo simply because that's traditionally what we do.
I want them to see art.

The Front...

The front of this pendant has already been cleaned up and refined.
The texture flows through the piece, creating movement rather than a perfectly predictable pattern. The raised areas catch the light, while the deeper grooves create shadow and dimension.
It's meant to feel organic.
It's meant to look as though the material itself created the movement.
This is the part most people will see first.
But it isn't the only part I care about.

The Back...

This photograph shows the back before I gave it the attention it needed.
It's rough.
It's unfinished.
And compared to the front, well...

Holy moly. 😂

But underneath that unfinished surface is the beginning of another piece of art.
The back doesn't need to be an exact copy of the front.
In fact, I don't want it to be.
It needs to have its own art.
It needs its own texture, movement, and character while still feeling like it belongs to the same piece.
Because if the pendant flips around, I don't want the story to stop.
I want it to tell another story.

Nature Doesn't Have a "Front" and "Back"

That's one of the things I love about working from nature.
A piece of driftwood doesn't have a side that nature decided was the beautiful side.
Every surface has something to say.
There are ridges, cracks, grain, weathering, and places where the wood has changed over time.
The texture continues around the piece because nature doesn't stop creating simply because we've turned something over.
That's what I try to translate into my jewelry.
I'm not trying to make the front beautiful and simply make the back functional.
I'm trying to make the entire piece feel alive.

Pieces of History, Inspiration for Today: The Driftwood Band

 

Pieces of History. Inspiration for Today.

The Driftwood Band is more than a piece of jewelry—it carries the character of the natural world that inspired it. After more than 20 years of working with organic forms, I still find that nature leaves the best fingerprints.

I've Been Making Men's Jewelry for 20 Years… Maybe It's Time to Pay Attention

I've been thinking.

That's usually when something interesting starts happening around here.

For more than 20 years, I've been carving jewelry inspired by the natural world. Leaves, branches, roots, vines, driftwood, coral—I've always been drawn to forms that look as though they grew instead of being designed.

And for just as long, I've been making pieces that men wear.

I've never really called it a men's collection.

I simply made what I wanted to make.

But lately, I'm beginning to wonder if I've been overlooking something that's been right in front of me all along.

The Driftwood Band

One of my long-time selling rings began with a real piece of driftwood.

Not a photograph.

Not a computer-generated texture.

Actual wood.

I studied the way it moved, the openings, the grain, the irregular shapes and the strength in something that had been weathered by nature.

Then I took that feeling into my wax.

The result became a ring that has continued to sell for years.

And it just sold again—in gold.

Interestingly, the most recent gold ring was purchased by a woman for her fiancé.

That made me smile.

Because maybe the customer isn't always looking for "men's jewelry."

Sometimes she's simply looking for something that feels like him.

And sometimes a man sees the organic ring his partner is wearing and says, "I like that. Do you have something that goes with hers?"

I love that idea.

Not matching rings.

Rings that belong together.

So I'm Paying Attention

I'm not interested in suddenly creating a huge men's jewelry department.

That's not how I work.

I'm thinking about a small group of pieces.

A few rings.

A pendant.

And perhaps a cuff.

(And if you've followed my work for any length of time, you know I'm no stranger to cuffs.)

My Ocean World cuffs were carried in Wyland Galleries for years, so creating a substantial organic cuff isn't new territory for me.

What's different is where my eye is today.

After more than two decades of carving, casting, experimenting and watching people live with my jewelry, I have a much better understanding of what happens when you let nature lead the design.

I Don't Want to Make "Men's Jewelry."

I want to make Dawn Vertrees jewelry that happens to be worn by men.

That's an important distinction to me.

I don't want to take my work and make it harder, heavier or more masculine just because someone says it is for a man.

I want to keep the things that have always made my work mine:

Organic form.

Texture.

Movement.

Strength.

Imperfection.

Nature.

And then see where those ideas take me.

Maybe that becomes a small men's collection.

Maybe it becomes something couples can discover together.

Maybe a woman finds a ring for her fiancé.

Maybe a man finds something that reminds him of the outdoors, the water, the woods or a place that means something to him.

I don't know yet.

And that's actually the fun part.

I'm going to start carving.

One piece at a time.

And we'll see what grows.

After all, that's how most of my jewelry begins.