KNOSSOS NECKLACE

When you return from Greece, if anyone asks you about the colors of Greece, you might never mention the color red. However, if you visit the ruins of the Minoan Civilization on the island of Crete at Knossos, you will see red. The first time I experienced Knossos, I loved these ruins compared to the dusty gray stones we had seen in the Peloponisos. These Minoan people had murals! They had colors! They had bathtubs!
(That's another story - it turns out it was a roomful of sarcophagi, but I was young; I thought they were bathtubs, and no one ever told me they weren't). Very civilized. When I took my son to this fabulous place years later, it had changed. The first time we visited, when I was young, we wandered around, climbed around, and there were maybe one or two other visitors there. In the 2000s, however, there were lines, and people, and waiting, and everything was cordoned off. Very civilized.
So I come home, and I'm telling my Koubaro about how much I love these ruins (I still do love that red!), and he tells me that those ruins were painted by the original archeologists who excavated the site. Not by Minoan muralists. I googled, and of course, he was correct. However, there are reds in Greece. On Crete. And they are beautiful.
And they inspired me to make this necklace. I wanted it to be fluid and curvy, like the red columns, so I used deep red crystal roundels in two sizes. They are set off by hematite squares and Swarovski crystal bicones. The square Bali Sterling Silver clasp is the finishing flourish.