Qanik

One day, a friend gave me a partly broken key as a gift. He had found it stuck in the lock of a door. This broken security key opened out into several directions, each side cut into little teeth forming crystal-like patterns. I then called at all the locksmiths in town to find similar keys. This is how I created the object entitled Qanik.

« Snow crystals are letters sent to us by the heavens ». Ukichiro Nakaya, Japanese physicist.

Qanik is made of thirteen crystal keys and one steel key. The crystal keys were melted from security keys that were all different. The fourteenth key, one of the original matrices of the moulds, is used to attach a chain entirely made of silver clasps. The ‘flake’ can be held by the other end of the chain and then made to sway.

With its ‘cosmo-poetical shape’, as Johannes Kepler (a seventeenth century astronomer and mathematician) defined it, the snowflake is intimately linked with our humanity. Each snowflake is unique but contains a common pattern, a sixfold symetrical matrix. Snowflakes are formed in a cold environment and in the vapour of the clouds. They move with the wind, and temperature and humidity give them crystal-like structures which are always unique.

Qanik means «falling snow» in Inuit, the tongue of the Eskimos.

This jewel was made with the support of the Lalique Manufacture of  Wingen-sur-Moder during a residency in February / March 2016.

Crystal, stainless steel, silver spring rings. 64 x 7 cm, 2016