The sea has always challenged the
minds & imagination of humans.
Even today it remains the last great
frontier of the Earth.
Rachel Carson, 1961
The ocean keeps little for itself.
Each tide returns fragments of another story. Shell, coral, pearl, plastic.
Time softens them equally. Edges dissolve. Meanings shift.
Treasures of the Ocean begins here.
Gathered from the shoreline, discarded remnants are paired with pearls, gemstones or precious metals. Materials separated by value find a shared language, inviting the precious and the forgotten to exist side by side.
Each piece occupies the space between ornament and artefact, beauty and consequence. It asks us to look again, not only at what the sea reveals, but at what it quietly returns.
The shoreline is a place of exchange. The sea gives back what it cannot keep. Some offerings are shaped by nature. Others carry the imprint of our own making. Weathered by salt, sun and time, they begin to resemble one another, their histories folded into a single tide.
My practice begins with these encounters. Each object is gathered, held, and transformed through the language of jewellery. Precious fragments, a gesture of care. Pearls, markers of time. Discarded fragments are not disguised or redeemed; they are seen anew.
These works offer not a resolution. They linger between loss and hope, asking only that we pause long enough to notice the interwoven beauty and responsibility inhabiting the one object.
Meet the Artist – Hanna Richardson
Born & raised in Germany Hanna’s love for nature and design started at young age. Living close to the forest, going to an outdoor walking-kindergarten, building many sandcastles in her sandpit, years of imaginative Lego play she studied & practised Interior Architecture for over 30 years with a portfolio of multiple awards. Interested in the detail and scale of materials and spaces she extended her design platform to jewellery.
‘A good design tells a story’ (Dieter Rams) is her design intent for every design. Her curious mind speaks through the language of design creating something unexpected, unique and stunning whether it’s a piece of jewellery, a space or an experience.
‘Treasures of the Ocean’ was born from many walks along her local beach where she lives in Australia picking up what people left behind on the beach and what ‘the sea [itself] gives back to the land what it has received’ (Rachel Carson). Deconstructing her findings and placing them in juxtaposition to gems she raises the conversation of what the world will be in 2050.
Materiality
The shoreline offers an unlikely collection.
Bottles, straws, balls, toys, floaties, lolly sticks, thongs, takeaway containers, emergency flags, detergent bottles, fishing line and more. Objects adrift from their intended purpose, gathered where land and sea meet. An abundance of colour, texture and unexpected form, carrying traces of lives beyond the water’s edge.
Cleaned and deconstructed, these fragments are reimagined as new objects. Their histories remain, but their meaning shifts.
Other materials are the gems of the sea. Pearls. shaped by time and the slow rhythm of the natural world. Valued for their rarity, colour and quiet intricacy, they bring a different kind of beauty to the work.
Brought together, these materials challenge the line between the cherished and the discarded, the naturally formed and the human-made. Each holds its own history, yet finds a new place within the same story.
