Starface Button Earrings

18k Yellow Gold / Diamond (0.06ct)

25mm

The suns, moons, and stars of our celestial collection are so powerful because of how instantly recognizable they are. Tony has called his Moonface, in particular, the "moon of the collective unconscious." Even though it's an entirely original creation, everyone who sees it thinks they've seen it before. Actually, it's the moon face Tony himself thought he saw years ago in Victorian children's books. When he went looking, though, he couldn't find exactly the image he had in mind. So he just made it himself. The Crescent Moonface followed as a logical next step, and it is also an iteration of a classic image from 19th century illustration. His perspective is reminiscent of Maxfield Parrish, N. C. Wyeth, and the early animation of Winsor McCay. Our Sunface has a similar story but also draws on Tony's interests in artisan horology, early timekeeping, and the marvelous mechanisms of the Renaissance that combined art and science together. If time and astronomy were even more intimately connected in that age of sundials and planetary prognostication, they were also connected to magic, and the motions of the heavenly bodies were believed to be keys to the secrets of nature. Tony, a lifelong seeker of nature's secrets, has kept this magic alive through his numerous automata and, more recently, with a Sunface pocket watch. But the Celestial collection, our largest collection of jewelry pieces today, also tells a story about the sun, the moon, and the stars. It's a journey through the heavens and through the history of Tony's art, a story that has evolved over time, because, as Tony points out, some images just stay with you.