designboom · Creativity & design

Melting Jewelry: Scarcity Becomes Spectacle

Artists Laila El Mehelmy and Ariel André have created a necklace, "ooOoooOoooOh la l’ice," that features ice cubes as its primary components, designed to melt away.

The necklace consists of seven ice cubes threaded onto a silver bead chain. A custom tray allows the wearer to freeze the ice on demand. Once removed from the mold, the ice begins to melt, transforming the piece into a temporary spectacle. The silver chain can also be worn independently.

The concept originated from observing people using ice to cool down during a hot summer party in Berlin, prompting a discussion about scarcity and the changing value of water.

The ice cubes, referred to as 'solid water gems,' are designed to melt on the wearer's body, taking about 30 minutes against bare skin or an hour over clothing. This process makes the necklace a 'time-piece' where time is marked by loss and disappearance.

The designers highlight that the value of the necklace lies not in its permanence but in its transformation and the wearer's experience of its disappearance, turning it into a performance.

The project challenges conventional luxury by using an ordinary, contested resource like water in place of permanent stones, questioning preciousness in an era of potential scarcity.

The melting process symbolizes the evanescence of water, with its beauty derived from its temporality. The necklace becomes most itself as it ceases to exist, folding the wearer into the natural water cycle.

AI-samenvatting op basis van de bron.