These works from the "Paper and Bone" grouping reference some of the first materials that humans used to create art objects: bone and shell.

People from every era and every region of the world have adorned themselves with jewelry. Jewelry creates meaning: it often communicates social position, indicates marital status, or commemorates a person or event. It can also serve functions like protecting, healing, or beautifying.

Early jewelry was made of bone, wood, stone, and animal skins—things on hand. Many contemporary jewelers reference the continuum of bodily adornment from ancient times through today by recontextualizing these natural materials or by referencing historical shapes, forms, and patterns.

Teri Blond used a beetle shell as a fingernail in the unusual "ring" in this first image.

Heather White's humorous, sensual brooch, a concentric corsage of human teeth, reconfigures disembodied frangments of human anatomy into a form that may then be placed back on the body.

In his works like this necklace made of antlers, nylon, and horsehair, Steven Gordon Holman joins creation myths of the indigenous Native American and Norse cultures of his regional roots, legends passed down from the area's first white settlers, personal family lore, and markers of contemporary pop culture to fabricate powerful, talismanic jewelry.

Elsa Bates Freund who, along with her husband, was a founding force behibd the arts community in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, has here created a simple necklace of seashellls and raffia that seems to echo all the way back to the most ancient forms of jewelry.