Artio

This one-of-a-kind hand-carved solid silver bear claw has a red garnet star-set into it and has a buried sterling band with an antique T-bar clasp and two-type vintage belcher chain. With all my bracelets, I always hope people will add their own charms and personal touches to make them truly their own.

In the realm of mineralogy, the garnet is scientifically fascinating as a group of silicate minerals that form under high-pressure geological conditions, making specimens valuable to researchers studying the Earth's crust and mantle - i'd like to think I can harness ther energy of garnets under pressure : ) 

Garnets have been prized throughout human history for both their beauty and symbolic significance. As one of the oldest known gemstones — with use dating back thousands of years to ancient Egypt, Rome, and Greece — they've long been associated with passion, vitality, and protection (particually the Red garnets). It feels only fitting to pair such a stone with one of nature's most powerful symbols.

I've set this garnet into a bear claw, symbols of strength, protection, and primal courage. In many Indigenous and spiritual traditions, they represent the bear's fierce will to survive and its deep connection to the earth. A bear claw symbolizes resilience — the ability to face adversity head-on — and serves as a talisman of healing and inner power, much like the bear itself, which hibernates to heal and emerges renewed. The claw, a part of the animal that defends and gathers, reminds us to stand our ground, defend what matters, and move through the world with grounded confidence. Whether worn as a charm or marked in sigil form, the bear claw calls on the spirit of fierce guardianship and deep, instinctive wisdom.

The name of this piece comes from a Gaulish bear goddess whose worship spread widely across Celtic Europe. She embodied the full nature of the bear: its raw power and wildness alongside its nurturing, protective instincts and its sacred cycle of hibernation, withdrawal, and renewal. (Just last week my 94 year old dad sent me a reel about the bear, and how when humans "hiberate" sit/meditate in silence we renew.)

Weight: 34g
Circumference: 21cm
Diameter: 10.5cm