People
Svetlana Nesterushkina for Roushk
Roushk necklace specially for Bijoux Bazaar © Egor Berladin, Bosco di Ciliegi press department
Roushk necklace specially for Bijoux Bazaar © Egor Berladin, Bosco di Ciliegi press department
Svetlana Nesterushkina © Roushk
Svetlana Nesterushkina at work © Roushk
Roushk bracelets © Roushk
Architect Svetlana Nesterushkina who has already worked on specialty in Moscow, Rotterdam and Budapest, now moved to Africa to create her own jewelry brand. Svetlana so skillfully uses the ancient beans and seeds of some unknown African plants that the result doesn’t set up a distinct ethnic values, but at the same time it demonstrates current tribal trend.
In this particular necklace are used black ritual seeds from Mali (usually they are used in the initiation rituals and protect the person who wears them), also the disks made out of coconut wood that are about 30 years old and which were purchased from a seller of old African sculptures in Cote d’Ivoire.
Nowadays such disks are mostly made of recycled plastic and to find old, in particular hand-made wooden disks is quite difficult. The thread of the brass beans of the tribe Baule, that are used in this necklace was bought from a Tuareg seller on the ship on the way to Timbuktu. These beans are produced by Baule people, who still use the technology of VII century, when each bean is made separately: first – out of beeswax and only then cast in bronze. It’s really hard to define the exact age of these beans, but probably it’s about several decades. Such a flattened form is rarely encountered. The lock of the necklace is a copy of a traditional plummet which were used for weighing gold by Ashanti people in west of Africa for centuries.
