A plate catalogue of the works.

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A contemporary pendant from the found-object series, constructed in sterling silver around a recovered shard of vintage Dairy Belle milk bottle glass discovered in the artist’s garden. The translucent glass fragment retains partial lettering, with only the “ell” of Belle still visible. Clusters of orange cubic zirconia frame the shard, introducing warmth and luminosity. Suspended within an angular silver setting, the piece transforms a broken domestic remnant into a wearable fragment of social memory.

Diary Bell forms part of a body of work centred on found objects recovered from the soil of my garden. Each unearthed fragment carries traces of forgotten lives, ordinary routines and private histories. Rather than treating such objects as discarded waste, I approach them as accidental archives — remnants through which memory can be reactivated and revalued. The found object in this piece is a shard from an old Dairy Belle milk bottle. In many South African communities, glass milk bottles were once left outside homes at night with a few coins placed inside or beside them. By morning, fresh milk had been delivered and change returned. This quiet ritual belonged to a social world shaped by trust, routine and neighbourhood familiarity. The recovered glass therefore carries not only material age, but the memory of a vanished social contract. Only the letters “ell” from Belle remain visible on the shard. This partial word is significant. Memory rarely returns intact; it arrives in fragments, syllables and glimpses. What survives is often incomplete, yet emotionally charged. The missing letters become as important as those that remain, allowing absence itself to speak. The shard becomes a broken sentence from the past. The sterling silver setting was designed to honour rather than conceal the irregular geometry of the glass. Its angular structure stabilises the fragment while allowing light to pass through it, preserving the translucent qualities of the original bottle. The orange cubic zirconia clusters introduce a contrasting warmth. Their colour recalls sunrise, kitchen light, and the early morning moment of delivery. They act as small bursts of remembered warmth around an otherwise cool and weathered relic. Conceptually, the pendant reflects on how everyday systems once carried forms of human trust that now feel distant. The piece is not merely nostalgic; it asks what has been lost when convenience replaces familiarity, and when security becomes uncertainty. Jewellery allows this ordinary fragment to be carried forward as testimony. The combination of precious metal, synthetic stones and discarded glass also questions conventional hierarchies of value. The glass, once commonplace and broken, becomes the emotional centre of the work. Its worth lies not in rarity, but in memory.