jewels. Hers are somewhat more
organic than Lilly’s, often with a
funky twist. Like Lilly, Judith is an
old-school goldsmith, relying on
tools remarkably similar to those the
ancients used.
“I’m a dinosaur,” Judith says. “I
use pliers, saws, and hammers. I use
a fl ex-shaft for grinding but I don’t
have the state-of-the-art stuff most
of my peers use.” She carves the
original models, then sends them
to a company in New York City for
casting. “Sometimes the castings
don’t come back beautiful, clean,
and pristine, but I like that,” she says.
“It’s okay.”
As for ancient gold: “I love it.
There’s something about the dreamy
feeling you get thinking about who
was making it and how it was worn.”
Another designer known for
ancient gold revival jewels, Carolyn
Tyler rarely looks at the sources she
relied on in her youth. “In my early
days of designing, 25 years ago, I
did refer to my books on artifacts of
antiquity,” she says. “But designing
is so second nature now. My current
sources of inspiration are more per-
sonal experiences — immersion into
nature, travel, dreams, and shamanic
journeys.”
These days, Carolyn is travel-
ing the world, doing a lot of scuba
diving, and exploring what she calls
“psychedelic archetypes and sacred
geometry — where physics and
metaphysics meet.” When we spoke,
she had just attended the Science
and Non-Duality (SAND) conference
held in Umbria, where ancient Etrus-
can master goldsmiths once lived
and worked. She was about to visit
the Etruscan Museum, the Vatican,
and Pompeii.
“I still love to admire what the
ancient master craftsmen did with
their rudimentary tools hundreds of
generations ago,” she says.
As for the revival tradition, she
says, “I thought of my work as
‘archaic revival’ before I was aware
there was a category of jewelry
design called Archaeological Revival.
The word ‘archaic’ refers to Greco-
Roman style from around 600 B.C.,
and much of my work is infl uenced
by my youthful passion for ancient
Mediterranean history.”
Several years passed between her
college archaeology studies and
her career as a jewelry designer,
but Carolyn believes her design
sense formed while studying those
ancient cultures. Egyptologist Brian
Fagan, then head of the anthropol-
ogy department at the University
of California Santa Barbara, was an
early mentor.design
“Nature was the
commanding force
in jewelry design
in that time,” Lilly
says. “That’s what
they had, that was
their focus, and
they went right to
the source.”Carolyn TylerPegasus Pendant
Authentic 2500-year old silver Greek/Macedonian
coin, 22K goldPHOTO: COURTESY CAROLYN
TYLERCarolyn TylerRamses Ring
Ethiopian opal, antiqued (blackened) 22K gold
PHOTO: COURTESY CAROLYN TYLERCarolyn Tyler based the design of her Ramses ring on this original
double-duck Ramses cuff from the Cairo Museum Collection of
pharaonic artifacts. PHOTO: COURTESY CAROLYN TYLERCarolyn TylerNefertiti Ring
Rubellite tourmaline, chrome tourmaline accent stones, 22K gold
PHOTO: COURTESY CAROLYN TYLERNOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2019 57