FEATURE STORY

Dama Jewelry

Mechanical gears go glam in diamonds and gold

The phrase “give them the gears” takes on a whole new meaning once you lay eyes on Heather Keller’s jewelry.

Her 18 kt gold and diamond cuffs and pendants elevate the gear – a useful but relatively mundane mechanical component - into works of art.

“The cuff and pendant use castings of gears I removed from antique clocks of the 1930s,” comments Keller, whose label Dama is the Greek word for the Queen in a deck of playing cards.

Keller’s interest in timekeeping is also evident in a pendulum necklace which features a sphere of lapis or coral suspended from a long chain. The pendulum swing formula is etched in gold above the ball, which is finished with gold tassles.

Keller is a designer and painter based in New York and Greece. She studied fine arts and goldsmithing at the Art Institute of Chicago, School of Visual Arts and New York Academy of Art, and is a graduate of Northwestern University. She has also worked as a book editor and writer for Rizzoli, Assouline, Gloss.com, ArtInfo, and Diane von Furstenberg.

A passion for the machine-age modernists of the ‘20s and the depression era and the work of Picabia, Noguchi and Duchamp inspire her work.

For more information or to place an order see Dama Jewelry.