One day last week when our mailman delivered the mail, he brought an arrowhead and asked me to make it into a necklace for his grandson.
It’s an authentic one that he and his grandson found during a rafting trip in North Carolina.
They had stopped for a picnic during their adventure and saw the arrowhead on the river bank.
It took me a few days to decide on a way to wire-wrap it. I wanted to design a simple setting that looked like it could have been done in the era when the arrowhead was made.
And since the stem of the arrowhead is straight instead of notched, it needed a setting that also wrapped around the main body of the arrowhead to hold it securely.
I finally settled on this “one shoulder” design, and hung it on a black leather cord:
I felt a unique creative energy with this project – the sacredness of combining my craftsmanship with the work of the long-ago person who hand-knapped the arrowhead.
But it wasn’t until I gave the finished necklace to our mailman that I found out that this arrowhead is from the Woodland Period – and that the person who made it probably lived about 20 centuries ago.
If you’d like to make an arrowhead wearable, I made a free tutorial on how to wire wrap an arrowhead while I created the setting for this piece.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
What a beautiful work Rena!!!
If rocks could talk! What I truly love about natural stone is just wondering when hands first touched them, who found them, and so on and so on. I dream alot!
What a great find on a fun trip.
Nice job on with wrap
I would drill a hole in the and wear it…. I know it would damage it but I feel wrapping it with wire will not show up the its beauty fully.
I love the story behind the project. I am thinking about what my thought process would have been along the way. In addition to coming up with a design that honors the stone, you also you had to be thinking about what a young boy (not sure of his age) would wear as well. Great work!
@Carolina, Millie, Lisa – Thanks so much for your compliments on the wirewrap, and for appreciating the uniqueness of the project!
@Millie – Me too – and also just the incredible sense of holding so much history in my hand.
@Natural Gemstones – Drilling a hole in an ancient artifact is something I couldn’t possibly bring myself to do. After it survived intact for at least 2 millennia I personally wouldn’t feel right removing even a tiny part of it.
Very nice work well done !
My wife used to wire wrap cabochons and once she had a customer in the USA purchase an uncut opal from Australia and have it shipped to the UK. She wire wrapped it to the customers specifications and then we mailed it on to the USA.
Wire wrapping is an art form and if you can master it as you obviously have done so some great pieces can be achieved. We found that the wire wrapping of cameos proved to be a big hit in the UK.
Thanks for sharing.
Nick
Nice. I found an arrowhead once when i was a kid on a riverbank near my cousins house. later I was skipping stones and accidentally threw it away and was kind of upset. nice work on the wire wrap