of earrings each day. But, to me, that’s everything that’s wrong with fast
fashion. I love knowing that these pieces aren’t going to degrade. I want
them to be able to be worn during your and your children’s lifetimes.”
Not that Rosaleen ever set out to be a jewellery maker. While studying
contemporary photography at the Victorian College of the Arts, she took
a single semester course in sculpting and casting, during which she
“fell in love with the process of making an object, casting that object
and then making another object from it”. She began making earrings
for her friends, but the orders quickly piled up until she found herself
spending more time making jewellery than taking photographs. “It took
me a while to come around to the idea of doing this properly. I thought
jewellery-making was something bored housewives did,” she laughs.
“My grandma, who is a housewife, would make jewellery and give it
away to people, and I just never thought about the impact jewellery
could have on people’s lives.”
Rosaleen releases her work in batches, each tied to a particular location
or theme. “I recently came back from Tasmania’s Bay of Fires and it’s
just so stunning down there. The beaches have the tiniest shells I’ve
ever seen. I didn’t want to take too many, but I also wanted to share that
space with people and talk about how amazing Tasmania is. So I took a
handful and did five pairs from that one particular area.”
Her longest-running series is also her most personal – flowers from
her mother’s garden in Victoria’s Dandenong Ranges. “I’ve been making
those for almost four years now. Recently, I completed a collaboration
with one of my best friends, Caitlin. They’re earrings with a mix of
flowers from her mother’s garden and flowers from my mother’s garden.
Both of our mothers live hours away, and we were feeling homesick and
nostalgic for that bliss that comes from just being at home in your family
garden with nothing to do. That sense of total ease.”
Rosaleen’s been working on Mamoru full-time for over a year now,
operating out of a shared studio space in Brunswick, in Melbourne’s
inner-north. But dedicating herself to the craft is not without its
challenges: “I think, as a creative, everything about the business bit is
hard.” A saving grace was the government’s New Enterprise Incentive
Rosaleen and her flower-filled studio
are featured in our new book, Look
What We Made – an introduction to
the new generation of Australian
makers. Find your nearest stockist or
grab a copy online at frankie.com.au/
lookwhatwemade.Scheme (NEIS), which gives people looking to start new businesses
free training in the nitty-gritty of tax, accountancy and their legal
obligations. “This sort of stuff is so important for creatives to know. If
I hadn’t done the NEIS, I would have really been stabbing in the dark.”
The other overarching challenge is more internal. “I struggle with my
mental health sometimes. So running my own business is good and
bad for me. I can work when I have the energy to work, and take a day
off and not feel guilty. But on the flipside, there’s that feeling that no
one else is there to share the load when I do need the time off.” At
the end of the day, it’s the making itself that gets her through. “If I’m
having a bad day, I just kind of pinch myself and think, ‘You’ve got one
of the best jobs in the world. Why don’t you wanna go into work today?
You wouldn’t have it any other way, so suck it up and get in there.’ And
once I’m here, it’s always better.
“Ultimately, I love sharing stories with people. When I put a pair of
earrings up online I usually offer a story about where it’s come from
or its influence in my life. And so often people will say, ‘Oh, I’m buying
this pair of hydrangea earrings because my grandma had a beautiful
hydrangea garden.’ To have a back-and-forth with people about a
particular flower and what it means to them is so nice. The people who
send me stories like that are the best people in the world, I think.”my project