This amazing necklace is handmade from brass, recycled sterling silver and Leland blue slag and is attached to a 14" neoprene cord with a clasp closure.  The brass pendant is 2" long, the Leland blue slag is encased by a 1" recycled sterling silver triangle, and a 1 1/2" blue charm hangs below the brass pendant.

Leland blue antique slag is found along the beaches of Lake Michigan and dates to around 1875-1920.  It's composed of part stone, part glass from the brief period when iron and copper ores were refined in lower Michigan. The ores, which were mined in the Upper Peninsula, were sent downstate by freighter to the smelters.  At the time, people foolishly believed that the hardwood forests growing in the area would supply a limitless amount of firewood for charcoal, which would in turn run the blast furnaces at the smelters.  The forests eventually ran out of trees and the smelting period ended as well.  But for that brief period, the metal ores from the UP were melted in the huge furnaces.  The pig iron was separated from the slag - a glassy waste product composed mostly of silicates and other minerals - which was in turn dumped in Lake Michigan making Leland blue essentially a 100 year old industrial waste product.  It also happens to be rare, durable and beautiful.  And for the past century a lot of that so-called waste material has been washing back up onto the beach.  Today, the lucky beachcomber may still find slag on teh Leland beaches.  It comes in many colors, including black, green, purple and most rarely, blue.  The stone in this necklace was hand-collected, cut and left unpolished.  The pits and hoes are part of the natural interest of the material, formed when the molten slag was dumped into the cold water.

Felicia Parsons of Green Fuse Jewelry creates fabricated metal jewelry - meaning hand formed from sheet, as opposed to cast and sculpted from clay.  She works alone as a studio artist, producing her metal work herself from conception to final polish.  She also melts and fuses silver scrap to create a raw, highly tactile and unprocessed quality of surface.  In her style she seeks to merge industrial culture with an organic sensibility. 

She wants her work to celebrate both humanity and nature without compromising either, so she uses recycled and reclaimed metals almost exclusively.  She obtains US-sourced stones that have been cut and polished by artisan lapidaries; usually the same individuals who dug or collected the raw material.  It is important to her that none of the gemstones she uses were mined by children or forced labroers, nor do they come from places with lax or non-existent environmental protections.  She finds no beauty in an object that was born in suffering or subjugation.  Since her art is meant to adorn the body, wearability remains inportant to her.  Her work seeks not only to respect humane values, but enhance human beauty.