PumPoiki - The Label

I have labelled my jewellery ‘PumPoiki’. I chose the name for a number of reasons. Pronounced phanetically; it is derived from the Afrikaans word ‘pampoentjie’ the literal meaning ‘little pumpkin’, but the term is also used to describe the immensely fragile and intricate exoskeleton of a sea urchin.

I fell in love with the term as soon I heard it but being English and not very good at languages I couldn’t get my head around the true way to pronounce it let alone the awkward spelling! I played with a few literal translations of the word in English and am pleased with the final outcome.

The name is creative and unique with a funky edge, likewise my jewellery and the meaning makes it even more significant. I have had an obsession with sea urchin shells since I was a kid and they are a constant and undeniable source of inspiration with my jewellery.

Who? What? Why?

I completed the 3-year National Diploma course at the Cape Peninsular University of Technology (C.P.U.T) in Cape Town in November 2007. I am now doing the Btech course there part time over two years which will give me ample time to find my place in the jewellery industry and the confidence to go out into the big bad world!

Born and brought up in Kenya, I have a strong love for Africa and there is often an ethnic feel to my jewellery. I love designing and have an artistic nature. I have been blessed with the privilege of having travelled a fair bit and spent 5 years of secondary level education in a boarding school in Dublin. I feel this has influenced the union between western contempory and ethnic styles which I try to create in my designs.

I am and naturally always have been ‘a collector.’ I find found objects fascinating and am continuelessly inspired by them. I love the gifts mother nature has to offer and being a bush baby brought up in the bundu, I am lucky enough to spend ample time at home each year roaming around up-country or scanning the beach for her hidden treasures.

I often find that many of my projects begin their design process journey with a physical object rather than traditionally with lots of sketches. I have a visual mind and quite often struggle to translate idea from imagination to paper, I will know what I want but not always know how to draw it.

I am a contempory ethnic jeweller and designer. I have always enjoyed a mixed media approach to my creativity and generally prefer using a combination of materials rather than just sticking to one. I love tribal adornment and that jewellery still plays such an important role in their societies irrespective of the material cost. I am indebted to Angela Fisher and Carol Beckworth for their incredible work in researching and photographing Tribes all over Africa. Their books are not only magnificent works of art but are realistic and accurate recordings and visuals of so many fading cultures and traditions which are rapidly being enveloped into the western world.

Sea Urchins

My biggest and oldest collection I have is all the treasure I have picked up mostly from the Kenyan beaches. As kids we used to have beach art competions for which we would earn chappie money for prizes.

We would spend endless hours beachcombing and the joy of finding any member of the urchin family was fantastic – we don’t get nearly as many on the southern coast beaches as more often than not they get smashed up on the reef, its always a bonus to find one still perfectly intact. They are incredibly fragile and all too often I have experienced the disappointment on arriving home only to find shattered remains.

In my third year of studying jewellery design I finally discovered and came up with a process to preserve and reinforce the shells so that they can last forever and be used a cabochons in jewellery. (see PumPoiki Cabochons)


The Facts

· Sea urchins are small, spiny sea creatures of the class Echinoidea found in oceans all over the world. (the name urchin is an Old English name for the round spiny hedgehogs sea urchins resemble.)

· The spines give both the sea urchins and the Echinoderms, their names. The Greek word, ‘echinos,’ refers to both the spiny European hedgehog and to sea urhins.

· The globular shaped fragile shell we find on the beaches is also called the ‘test’.

· Regular sea urchins are strongly pentamerous; that is they have a five-star symmetry. When viewed from either the top or bottom, the spines will be seen to be arranged in five or ten rows spaced regularly and evenly around the body.

· On a sea urchin test each of the whiter bands is called an ‘ambulacrum.’ There are five such ‘ambulacra’; the five-fold symemetry reveals a kinship with starfish and sand dollars.

· On the oral surface of the urchin which is at the bottom of the shell is a centrally located mouth made up of five united calcium carbonate teeth which we can see in the test. This is named Aristotle’s lantern after his accurate description in “History of Animals”