Lucie Majerus says she likes to “question and make people question the ordinary, trigger their imagination and playfulness, and make them smile.” The Luxembourg-based designer aimed to do exactly that shortly after having her wisdom teeth extracted. Majerus used her own teeth to create a collection of jewelry highlighting her pearly whites. She says of the project (which features some daring-if-wearable earrings, cuffs and rings) “Human Ivory proposes an egalitarian jewellery collection, where the body is being adorned by its own gem.”
The artist’s work is more interesting because of the egalitarian proposition behind it. Everyone loses teeth through the natural course of life, first in childhood and then into old age. Majerus cites the concept of Wabi Sabi, or the Japanese philosophy to cherish the unpretentious, the simple and the aged; the older you get the bigger your personal collection of tooth pearls grows. Unlike expensive and rare animal ivory – everyone has access to these little gems. And although the process of losing teeth or having them removed isn’t pleasant, the “harvesting” of human ivory is certainly less lethal to the person and the planet than that of the African variety.
The crafting process involves collecting the teeth after extraction (Majerus has used her own teeth and that of her professors at Eindhoven), bleaching them to various shades of ivory color, then stone-polishing each tooth before creating custom accessories.
