Eco-Chick · The modern girl's guide to living green & fabulous.

Digby and Iona: Handmade Jewelry with a Whimsical Touch

Aaron Ruff, the designer behind Digby & Iona, in his Brooklyn studio.

It’s rare that I obsess over jewelry; I am lucky enough to have inherited all my grandma’s and great-grandma’s necklaces, rings, hatpins, brooches and bracelets, pieces from 1880-1980, and rarely find anything that’s as interesting or beautiful as what I already have. I’m darn picky, in other words, and only respond to jewelry that’s really interesting or different. When I stumbled up on Digby & Iona, I audibly exclaimed; here was a collection of interesting, humorous, intelligent pieces that compliment each other or stand on their own. And was I excited to hear that it’s made here in NYC from recycled metals? You know it.

Designer Aaron Ruff’s latest collection, Me and My Arrow, is made up of and is inspired by “…the classic Harry Nilsson album The Point, Me & My Arrow retells the fable about Oblio, the only round-headed boy in Pointed Village, where everyone and everything had to have a point.” I got a chance to ask Aaron a few questions about his new line and his design process, and he was generous enough to provide the answers herein.

The bluejay arrow necklace

Starre Vartan: Where do you find your inspiration? I’m loving the arrows collection, how did you come up with the idea to use real bird feathers?

Aaron Digby: I’ve mainly worked with silver and brass for the last few collections and really wanted to use color. The feathers were a great natural material with a huge range of colors and textures I could work from. Almost all my designs are rooted in my childhood. Anything that interested me as a kid seems to bubble up to the surface in my designs, I was a little obsessed with Indian craft techniques. The bow and arrows are just miniature version on the ones I made when I was 8.

The Inspector Clouseau necklace.

SV: What are your sustainable/ethical practices, and why do they matter to you?

AD: I work with one of the few metal casters in New York who casts recycled sterling silver. The materials I work with are a limited resource – there’s only so much of any given precious metal on the earth, especially silver and gold and the vast majority of it has already been mined.

The 14-point stag ring.

SV: If you could make any piece of jewelry, price and resources being no object, what would it be?

AD: If we could add an unlimited timeline as well that would be the icing on the cake! I’ve always dreamt of making some little clockwork masterpiece that was not only beautiful and intricate but also fully functional.

The Stump ring.

SV: Can you give us a hint about what your next collections will be influenced by?

AD: I have a few collections I’m developing at the moment but haven’t decided what will be released for Spring 2012. So far it’s down to one based off of implements of measurement or the War of 1812.

A pendant-type bow necklace.

It’s a worth a look through all six collections on the site; the woods-and-sea background of native Mainer Aarron Ruff comes through variously and in different iterations but is always present.

Tres Belle Petite Medi Spa: Brooklyn’s Best (All Natural) Facial

I spoke with Allison Tray, co-owner of Tres Belle about what makes her spa green and how she got her start.

At Tres Belle Spa they promise no ‘snobbitude’ and they deliver! Voted “Best Spa in Brooklyn” by Citysearch last year, I recently trekked to the Boerum Hill section of Brooklyn to experience Tres Belle’s all-natural facial. It was incredibly relaxing and aromatheraputic, featuring the rosy-delicious Duchess Marden line of skin care products, which use as their basis rose demascena, The products are petrochemical, paraben, and preservative-free, vegan, never tested on animals, and all natural (which means you can pronounce all the ingredients). The line’s shea butter is bought directly from a matriarchal community in Uganda, supplying income for women in the community.

My experience was amazing; the facial lasted for an hour and included a lymph-draining facial massage, a deep cleansing, toning, masques, a neck massage, and exfoliation. Frankly, I’m not sure what all went on because I was so relaxed and everything smelled so amazing (never fake or preservative-laden, which I can’t stand) I was in a state of halfway-out-of-it the bulk of the session.

A thriving Brooklyn business for just over 6 years, Tres Belle is the brainchild of former Soho “fashionista” Allison Tray and her Father, Dr. Steven Tray, and besides the Duchess Marden facial, they do laser hair removal and plenty of other types of facials and skin care treatments; click here for details.

Eco Chick readers get a $20 discount on a Duchess Marden facial for mentioning this site when an appointment is made.

Tres Belle
105 Bond Street
Boerum Hill Brooklyn 11217
718.797.0033

Glassphemy!: A Creative Recycling Center For Glass and More

Glass broken at Glassphemy is recycled. Image by Chris Mottalini.

David Belt, Creative Director of Macro Sea, is the man who last summer in Brooklyn conjured swimming pools out of dumpsters.

Belt and the team of creative developers at Macro Sea have brought their ingenuity to the fore again with a creative recycling center for glass and, more effusively, human aggression. The visceral energy of type-A New Yorkers invited to hurl and smash truck-loads of empty glass beer bottles from Brooklyn’s breweries make for one massive opportunity to let it all out, I mean, really let it go full-throttle!

Tossing the Bottles. Image by Chris Mottalini

Participants, who are invited to both hurl the glass and be under its direct line of fire, are given the chance to be on both ends of the spectrum of the cathartic glass throwdown. Inside the recycling cage—an artifice of bullet-proof glass and steel circuited with light sensors—colorful bottles whizz through the air, shatter with a glorious fanfare of noise and illumination, and then cascade into an evanescent silence and darkness like a glorious fireworks display.

Check out what goes down at Glassphemy! Video by Alicia Lubowski-Jahn.

Indeed, behind the gritty business of emotional outpouring or the shattered glass of a city street, GLASSPHEMY! reveals the astonishing beauty of fragility and breakage.

Lamps filled with glass recycled on site.

Brooklyn Designs 2010 Green Finds: Colleen and Eric

It was a sunny and perfect afternoon on the Brooklyn waterfront (specifically, DUMBO) last Thursday, and also the opening of Brooklyn Designs, the annual local-BK event that highlights the borough’s most creative furniture and home decor.

Inhabitat has the full coverage of the event and all the green furniture (plus their awards!); I focused on the fun and fabulous (and green, of course) decor items that I found. First up, Colleen and Eric!

Colleen + Eric are brand-new to the furniture and design show, but their creations were some of my favorites. “Hold on Tight” Shelves, North Star End tables Flock of Birds wall decals ($55) and fab BKLN totebags ($35). See video below for close-ups and deets!

Eric of Colleen and Eric walks me through his booth at Brooklyn Designs

Eve S. Mosher: Eco Art Visualizing Powerful Intentions

48 Hours of Sao Paolo – Time’s Square, what are we not seeing? ▪ (proposal, 2008)

If seeing is believing, Eve S. Mosher is helping us to stretch our imagination to conceive our world as it might be in a future whose outcome we determine. Among her public art projects, she has visualized a Times Square unplugged from its high voltage current. Referencing the time component of the ever-pulsing energy of the eponymous city square, a time-out would open up new perspectives, what Mosher describes as: “to see what exactly are we missing by seeing the ads and not the space between, behind and around them.”

▪ Insert ____ Here ▪ (2008) – Insert *BIOSWALE/FILTRATION* Here – 062

Mosher also highlights time in her numerous other urban projects, where we are reminded of the intimate connection of the past and the future in our present. Neighborhood signs, for example, recommending “insert___here” suggest the promise of filling in the blanks in altering our communities through proposed insertions like green roofs, bike lines, solar panels, and a local/organic farmer’s stand. She has also retraced the sea level of New York City, projecting a drastically elevated future waterline of a metropolis increasingly flooded as a result of climate change.

▪ HighWaterLine ▪ (2007) – Passing through DUMBO, with the Brooklyn Bridge in the background

Seeding the City is Mosher’s most recent community project and it too expresses states of potential and becoming. Small plots of green tagged by vibrant green flags are sprouting on rooftops throughout Brooklyn and Manhattan. As Mosher herself describes, this initiative is about the power of potential: “Each installation is a seed of potential – potential for community action, potential for more green roof, potential for change!”

Seeding the City – “Cityscape”

Mosher, who is in residence at Wave Hill through March, will be participating in a panel discussion on art and environment on Sunday, March 7th at 2pm (with Susan Benarcik and Anne-Katrin Speiss, moderated by Mierle Laderman Ukeles) and in an open studio event on March 21st.

▪ Insert ____ Here ▪ (2008) – Insert *LOCAL/ORGANIC FARMER’S STAND* Here – 068

All images by Eve Mosher.