Pick up a leaf — any leaf — and hold it to the light. Watch how the veins branch outward from the central stem in mirrored pairs, each one thinner than the last, each one reaching for the edge. Botanists call this pattern pinnate, from the Latin for feather. It is one of nature's oldest engineering drawings, a blueprint for distributing water and light across the widest possible surface. It appears in ferns, in ash trees, in the fossilized impressions of plants that predate the dinosaurs.Momo Glassworks, a woman-owned studio in Northampton, Massachusetts, works in fused glass — a medium that requires building color and pattern before the kiln does its irreversible work. There is no glazing after the fact, no painted detail. Every line and hue must be laid in beforehand, then surrendered to heat. What emerges is something that holds light differently than any other material: not reflecting it, not absorbing it, but seeming to contain it. The pinnate pattern here is rendered in this way — vein by vein, layer by layer — and then set into a clean square frame that gives all that organic movement a geometric home.Structure and wildness, holding each other in place.Each earring is fused glass set in sterling silver, with sterling silver ear wires that are hypoallergenic and nickel-free. At seven-eighths of an inch including the ear wire, they sit close and compact — the kind of earring you reach up and touch because the surface catches you off guard. At just 2 grams per earring, they are extraordinarily light, designed for wearing all day without a second thought.Handcrafted by Momo Glassworks.
