Time To Cut The Thread...

Meet Atropos, the oldest of the Fate sisters! Being the oldest, she was of course the inflexible one. And once you met the other two sisters, meeting her was inevitable. Guess what her job was? She was the sister responsible for both the mechanism and time of your death! I wonder what she did for fun? I wonder if she had a sense of humor? I wonder if she had a favorite pair of Fiskars that she just dared her sisters to touch?

My version of Atropos

I first covered her in obituaries from the local paper, and then I went in and highlighted words that I thought were important and symbolic, such as loved, wife, was, home, sister...

Her eyes are vintage train tokens that represent both the payment and passage of the soul through the underworld. Her mouth is stapled shut with waxed linen thread, a practice still in use in modern day mortuary science.  And since I am a jewelry artist, I had to make her a necklace out of vintage watch faces and ceramic skull beads, both of which symbolize the passage of time. Her hair is made from matches, representing the ritual of cremation and the moss around her neck represents burial in the ground. I decided to cover her in a glass cloche to symbolize our modern day mausoleum trend. 

Until next time...sharpen your scissors!