Jewellery Inspired by Bitter Gourd

The Bitter Gourd plant. Flowers also can be seen

By Dr Hiranthi Pathirana

Inspiration can be defined as an influence on a person to do certain things, which qualifies the person to think anew. It could also be identified as a divine influence or a sacred revelation because it touches the intellect. It is the idea or the agent that touches upon the thought processes of the mind. Inspiration comes from seeing, listening, touching, tasting and also with constant interactions with thought processes and also previous experiences. In design this is very important. Constant rejuvenation of thought processes are important in good design.

What is essential seems to be an alert mind to capture these revelations. Imagination plays an important role here. Imagination allows the inspired ideas to be conceived as productive visual experiences for design. In this way, the inspiration can be drawn from endless sources that are around us. It is important that through imagination we come into intimate contact with nature, materials, forms and shapes, texture, light and shadow and also to identify the important mechanisms and innovative technology.

It is understood that man perceives nature by observation through clear inquisitiveness and curiosity. To him, nature is beauty. Man is blessed with the gift of many senses to transform feelings that generate the thoughts in him. Along the evolution of the human development towards civilization, man has shown a unique ability to identify forms and inner structures and silhouettes of shapes from nature’s creations. He has displayed a high skill of not only perceiving nature but also to bring its interesting mechanisms into focus. In the course of human development, man has depended on his imagination using natures creations as the fundamental principles of designs.

The variety of colour can be experienced with evergreen leaves, fruits and seeds, to beautiful flowers

An exercise of deriving design principles from a closer look at nature was conducted along with a plant study. The study focuses particularly on body adornment, it is evident that man began to incorporate nature’s beautiful designs into permanent forms of jewellery using non perishable materials with the idea of preserving for posterity. Therefore creating jewellery influenced from nature depicts a greater discipline and skill that had developed through long period of time with the enduring human effort.

The project features the potential of inspiration from plant life. The vegetable plant, Bitter Gourd (Momordica charantia) has been taken through a careful and methodical research to identify the generators in the design of jewellery. The plant Bitter Gourd can be identified as quite unique. It is a climbing plant with rich details of its adaptations to nature. The different parts of the plant are rich with details and have their interesting forms and shapes. The variety of colour can be experienced with evergreen leaves, fruits and seeds, to beautiful flowers. Even the smallest leaf is deeply lobed having deep creases on the surface. The mature leaves are significantly lobed with prominent veins radiating from different sections of the lobes. The plant has a thick, twisting and winding stem from which branches off the tender parts of the plant that bear the many tendrils. These tendrils have different formations spirals, each unique on its own.
The Bitter Gourd fruit can be identified as the most interesting feature of the plant that has many potential in design. The observation of its growth sequences indicate the form, colour and texture changes that occur at the subsequent stages. The tender most fruits have different shades of colour from light pastel shade greens to deep set greens. The ripened fruit bears tints of yellow and oranges that spills over from the bottom towards the neck of the fruit. The finely ripened fruits carry no traces of green, completely taken over by the bright oranges to luminous reds of many kind. The seeds are interesting features with unique identity of form adapted to capture the interest of the insects. The bright vermillion tender seed mellows to rustic yellow at the maturity of the seed.

The various elements of the Bitter Gourd plant and fruits have inspired to create designs that reflects man’s perceptiveness to nature.