Owner and creator of the jewellery brand, Beadworks, Hannah Bailly, grew up in Northern California, where beadwork is an indigenous art form.
"I learned traditional bead-weaving techniques when I was 18 and developed a great passion for the craft," said Bailly.
Within a year, Bailly had entered an exhibition at a prominent bead shop in Santa Cruz and took first prize for the originality of design.
Bailly said she was a rock tumbler as a child, living in the Mayacamas Mountains, where she found common stones such as jasper and obsidian in river beds. When polished, these stones were magical to her, and at 11, she began making jewellery by glueing her polished stones onto simple settings.
After the passing of her grandmother, Bailly inherited some of her jewellery ways, which she said her later design inspiration came from these vintage pieces that she has continued to cherish.
"I have also been inspired by my travels to the East, where I fell in love with the rich textiles, mosaic and intricate patterns in jewellery."
The Beadworkz brand is less than five years in the making. However, Bailly has been weaving beads for over 35 years, and Bailly sold her work under different labels in New Zealand in the 1990s and early 2000s.
"It brings me great joy to meet people who tell me they have a piece of my work from that period and are still wearing it."
After becoming a mother, Bailly put jewellery-making on the back burner and pursued an academic career. Although she gained an MA in Social Anthropology, her passion for design continued, and Bailly decided to return to jewellery.
Re-branding to Beadworkz was about re-claiming the tradition of this medium and unapologetically affirming the humble 'bead'. Bailly explained that the thing about beads that not everyone realised was that there is bead stringing, and then there was bead-weaving, commonly known as 'beadwork'.
While the string of beads seems to come and go from fashion, Bailly said that beadwork has something utterly timeless about it. Part of the Beadworkz project is to preserve and teach these ancient bead-weaving skills.
The Beadworkz jewellery range has a romantic and other-worldly quality. Many designs are named after an ancient Goddess, mythical figure, or a past era, and using natural gemstones invokes a magical element.
"I love the quiet, meditative process of weaving, but design is my passion, so the range continues to grow and change. Ultimately, I cannot help myself. In saying that, classic designs from the '90s still continue to have their place in the Beadworkz range."
As a slow-fashion label, Beadworks has a timeless nature of the medium that makes it so, as also the attention and labour that goes into creating each piece. The process involves hand-stitching one tiny micro-bead at a time to create a tapestry of beads. Thus much of Beadworkz's jewellery can be described as a textile. Bailly described the jewellery as flexible, tactile, and offering a unique aesthetic.
"The artisan quality of the work shows in its fine detail. A machine cannot do this work and is not produced in mass."
The most significant source of inspiration for Bailly comes from Art Nouveau, where Bailly said she was drawn to the elegant swirls and detailed design of this era, adding that her challenge as a beadwork artisan was to find these flowing shapes through sculpting micro-beads.
"The beads themselves also inspire me, and the history of beads and origins of beadwork."
Bailly uses the finest Japanese glass seed beads in rich and dusky tones, and she loves to explore how these materials can highlight and complement natural pearls and gemstones.
She continued that the weaving tradition spans human culture, and there was an engaging element in this medium that connected her to those who have come before and those who will continue to weave. For Bailly, the process of weaving is in itself therapeutic, and she said it could be described as a mindfulness practice.
"I love sharing this practice with others through teaching and creating magical adornments that contain not only beautiful components but the serenity of the weaving process."
Bailly's work has won art awards and has been featured in fashion magazines. However, the achievements she is most proud of are times of collaboration with other artists and the commissioned work she has done to satisfy a client's vision.
Bailly works from her sunny studio on the third floor of the Savoy Building in central Dunedin, where she teaches bead-weaving classes and repairs costume jewellery for the local community.
As a full-time artisan with a growing local client base, Bailly said her supply to a handful of local galleries and attendances at the festivals are aligned with her wish to maintain a small-scale production with an emphasis on custom design and collaboration with other designers.
