Courtney Brooke in the very first crystal crown
A Meditation On Quartz And Ice
March here in the Northern Hemisphere means we’re still deep in the freeze. Philadelphia hasn’t had a proper snow all year but the skies are a frosted gray most days, and the sunny days shine brilliantly through thin air, dazzling diamond light on any ice in the morning.
Inspiration by way of the norwegian fairy tale “East of the Sun, West of the Moon”
One of the first inspirations for crystal crowns came to me from this particular form of beauty. I handmade the very first crystal crown back in 2010 for a music video my band Ex Reverie was shooting with Courtney Brooke. The song was “East of the Sun, West of the Moon”, from the famous Norwegian snowy fairy tale, collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe. The song was originally composed as a soundtrack to a silhouette shadow play about the fairy tale, but I liked the result so much it ended up as the closing track on our EP “Praxis.” In the tale a poor man is approached by a huge white bear who asks for his youngest, prettiest daughter to wed. For this the bear will offer riches. This paragon of fatherhood eventually convinces the girl to agree and the bear spirits her away to his castle. The movement of the night flight through the snow, the fearful power of the bear (who, naturally, is actually an attractive prince), the speed of being carried bodily through a magical winter landscape…all of these forces move through the song with plenty of bombastic drums and proggy rock riffs.
A rock and roll fairy tale winter queen needs an ice crown
In imagining the video we had so much rich imagery to work with. Courtney created amazing costumes and creatures, and I thought long and hard about what I should wear. Both as the singer and in the role of the winter queen. I had already run one crown company in the early 2000’s called Elemental Dream Day, so headpieces always jumped to mind. A rock and roll fairy tale winter queen needs an ice crown, what else? It came to me: quartz crystal points, turned upside down and secured in a ring, would be perfect. I set to work making the very first crystal crown and we used it in the video. It looks like a primitive version of our “Mountain Witch” style, with obelisk-cut clear quartz on a full round frame. Courtney still has that original artifact…little did we know how far that idea would go!
Art that truly carries electricity in its bones
Once I decided to make more of them, a few years later, I was looking for ways to expand the idea and came across the artist Andy Goldsworthy’s work. The way he works in and with nature gives me that frisson that only comes from art that truly carries electricity in its bones. His “Ice Arch” piece is a definite antecedent to the first simple crystal crown, our Daughter of the Day.
From the Britannica entry: “As an adolescent growing up in Yorkshire, England, Goldsworthy worked as a farm labourer when not in school. That work fostered an interest in nature, the cycles of the seasons, and the outdoors. He studied art at Bradford School of Art (1974–75) in Bradford, West Yorkshire, and at Preston Polytechnic (now University of Central Lancashire) in Lancashire(B.A., 1978). While in school he discovered his preference for creating art outdoors rather than in the studio. He began to make temporary site-specific works with stones, leaves, sticks, snow, ice, and any other natural materials available to him. Some of his earliest works were rock sculptures at a beach near his art school. He also established the practice of photographing his works once he had completed his art and before the materials and structure—typically arches, cones, stars, spheres, or serpentine lines—succumbed to the elements.”
Using elements of nature to define shapes dreamed of by the human imagination remains, to this day, one of the things that keeps me interested in creating.
I love all natural stones, but quartz holds something special for me
Quartz crystal in particular has always been at the very heart of Elemental Child. I love all natural stones, but quartz holds something special for me. It feels like the purest example of the magic of crystal - it looks like ice, or light itself made solid. I love that it has scientific uses, too, in radios and watches. The vibrational quality of the material is a verified fact, not just a nice idea.
Again, let’s consult the Britannica:
“Quartz is piezoelectric: a crystal develops positive and negative charges on alternate prism edges when it is subjected to pressure or tension. The charges are proportional to the change in pressure. Because of its piezoelectric property, a quartz plate can be used as a pressure gauge, as in depth-sounding apparatus…Just as compression and tension produce opposite charges, the converse effect is that alternating opposite charges will cause alternating expansion and contraction. A section cut from a quartz crystal with definite orientation and dimensions has a natural frequency of this expansion and contraction (i.e., vibration) that is very high, measured in millions of vibrations per second. Properly cut plates of quartz are used for frequency control in radios, televisions, and other electronic communications equipment and for crystal-controlled clocks and watches.”
Sure, diamonds are great, but here in quartz we have gorgeous shards of what looks like pure light, controlling frequencies and dazzling the eye with its ability to reflect the sunlight and glow in candlelight. To me, this is the ideal material for a crown.
Crowns symbolize power
Crowns symbolize power. When the shape of the crystal crown itself (rather than just the ornament) is made from a spectacularly beautiful and light wielding material with vibrational qualities so well-known we use them to run machines, what could be more truly powerful?
So there you have it, the origin of the crystal crown. Born of rock and roll, beautiful old fairy tales, visions of sunlight on ice, and a love for quartz itself. I had no idea so many people would love these things as much as I do, and I’m so very glad they did. Working with gorgeous stones is always where I start with a design, I try to let the materials shine through above all else. I think my job is just to harness them in the best ways possible, and make them wearable so we can all carry that magic with us.
"Ice Arch" by Andy Goldsworthy
