Partnering: Happy Hour

Partnering: Happy Hour
Collaborative Necklace with 7 Brooches
7 Brooches by Rebecca Rose:
13.05 troy oz. / 370 grams
Cast .925 Sterling Silver
Necklace by Louise Perrone:
Vintage cocktail dress, styrene sheet, nylon thread, magnets
11" x 10" x 1"
Unique, 1/1
2015
$3500

Canadian artist Louise Perrone and I partnered on this collaborative piece. Comes with 1 necklace, 7 cast sterling silver brooches, rubber pin backs, and signed, numbered, dated, fingerprinted documentation for provenance.

RR: It may be the drink lover in me, but whenever I think of the word garnish, giant skewers submerged into highballs and mixologists shoving every ingredient behind the bar onto tiny umbrellas vividly come to mind.

Each of the 7 brooches are submerged into the cocktail glass designs threaded into Louise’s necklace. The pins represent different drinks like Mai Tais, Bloody Marys, craft beer, blended and frozen cocktails, and Martinis. Even biscotti, cookies and sweets find their way into coffee liquor drinks as a garnish.

LP: As a jewellery artist working in textiles, when Rebecca suggested the cocktail theme for our collaboration, I immediately thought of the cocktail dress. The emergence of the cocktail dress in the late 1920’s represented a time of liberation for women. As it became socially acceptable for women to enjoy drinking in mixed company, a flexible, functional uniform of a short sheath dress with matching hat, shoes and gloves came to represent the progressive, modern woman.

LP: Unfortunately as cocktail culture evolved rules about appropriate dress and etiquette were established and the sense of freedom was replaced with strict expectations based on class and social position. The Cocktail Party reached its peak of popularity in the early 1960’s, but the iconography associated with it is embedded in our visual language. The tension between freedom and rigidity was something I wanted to exploit in the work Rebecca and I were going to create.

LP: I found a little black cocktail dress at the thrift store and ripped it to shreds. The shape of the necklace emerged from the silhouettes of cocktail shakers and the lines of hand stitches that I used to navigate from one seam to the next formed the outline of martini glasses.

LP: Rebecca suggested the title Happy Hour - It felt right. Growing up in Eighties Britain I had been a huge fan of the band The House Martins and loved their song Happy Hour - a catchy number that critiqued materialism, social climbing and casual misogyny. I sent Rebecca a link to the video.