Aesa.

* "[They're like] found objects from a future world," says Randi Mates of the pieces in her jewelry line Aesa. With a healthy dose of smarts and a philosophical lean, Aesa is largely shaped by the Brooklyn-based jeweler's previous career as a historian. "I felt I needed to get out in the world, to not only be conversing with ghosts," she says of her radical career shift. Mates actually began making jewelry by studying ancient metalsmithing techniques. Her new collection takes cues from the materials themselves--striking splices of agate, quartz and heliodor. She fashions each piece in geometric shapes that mirror the architecture of the stones, representing, as she says, "the fusion of nature and machine." Back to the future indeed.

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ANGELA CRAVENS

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