The swirly shell that held the voice of the Little Mermaid in Disney’s 2023 live-action adaptation looked like the ancient marine mollusk called an ammonite.
That’s because Colleen Atwood, the costume designer who also created the movie’s shell necklace, said in an email that she had based it “on a real fossilized shell I had.”
But it was only one of the ammonites to appear in jewelry in recent years as the mollusk’s spiral structure and patterned surfaces have caught the eye of designers and jewelry resellers alike.
For example, ammonites appeared in Ashley Moubayed’s 2023 Apocalyptic Summer collection for her jewelry brand Don’t Let Disco, based in Brooklyn. And she has been using them for such recent designs as Akasha Alchemy, a 65-inch waist adornment with stones like smoky topaz, obsidian and jade ($575); a choker beaded with crystals and pyrite ($525); and for charms that can be added to a hand-wrought silver necklace called the Keeper Collar ($195-$350).
The designer likes to joke that her favorite color is “neon beige, and actually that is the color of some of these fossils,” she said. “But I think I’m most drawn to them for the profound sense of history.”
After all, the creatures — distant cousins of the octopus and the nautilus — lived in shallow seas worldwide until 66 million years ago, when they mostly died out with the dinosaurs.
While geologists often use ammonites to help date other fossils, Ms. Moubayed said it is no wonder that some people find them to be “really good meditation tools.” Ammonites “thrived in deep time and then turned to stone; they’re these coiled series of chambers, like portals,” she said.
Karlo Hecimovic said he came across ammonites a few years ago while he was gathering materials for his fashion jewelry line Kalyss, headquartered in Berlin. “To me, ammonites embody both ancient wisdom and futuristic elegance,” said Mr. Hecimovic, who strings gems such as baroque pearls, citrine, coral and quartz in one-off or made-to-order necklaces.
Five opalized ammonites are the highlight of a necklace called True Colors, with clear quartz and natural black pearls, now for sale on his website at 699 euros, or $790.
“Primordial Ooze”
Small ammonites have become earrings in the hands of Gabriella Kiss and Margery Hirschey, both fine jewelry designers in the United States.
“I just try to honor them as they are,” said Ms. Kiss, who first used ammonites two decades ago. Now her earrings show them in settings of 18-karat gold ($950). And she noted that her favorite part of working with ammonites in her Bangall, N.Y., studio is when she submerges them in water and uses a diamond drill bit to remove any sediment: “It turns into the most amazing primordial ooze.”
Ms. Hirschey, who lives in Boulder, Colo., bought her first ammonites last year at a trade show. “You see the sapphires, the rubies, the diamonds and the tourmalines — it’s always the same thing,” she said.
Then she noticed some ammonites that had been cut into slices and its chambers filled with mother-of-pearl: “I thought, ‘Yeah, we can do something with these.’” She has set similar slices in recycled 18-karat gold with pink freshwater pearl accents ($2,850).
Ammonite jewelry also has prompted some other creative efforts, such as a butter yellow dress printed with midnight blue ammonites in Tyler McGillivary’s most recent fashion collection, a collaboration with the Los Angeles designer Ella Mae. Ms. Mae designed the dress, but its pattern was influenced by an ammonite necklace that Ms. McGillivary, who lives in New York, bought last summer in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar.
And vintage jewelry retailers say they cannot keep ammonite pieces in stock.
“We’re constantly on the hunt for vintage and antique jewelry that incorporates them,” said Jennifer Francis, the co-founder of the e-boutique Kindred Black. For example, she recently sold a set of what were advertised as Pleistocene Earrings, silver clip-ons featuring brown-black ammonites.
Similarly, the antique jewelry dealer and designer Erica Weiner posted on Instagram an 18-karat gold ring from the 1940s featuring a pyritized ammonite (the calcium carbonate shell was replaced by iron pyrite over the millenniums). It sold immediately for $725, she said, adding that many of the disappointed buyers asked to be put on a waiting list for future ammonite pieces.
But the appeal should not be hard to understand, she said. “We are at the edge of our tolerance threshold with technology and everyone is aching for magic. Fossils are definitely magic.”
Special Patterns
Many of the ammonites sold to jewelers — including those that the fine jewelry designer Monika Krol uses for her namesake brand — come from Morocco. Madagascar, the United States and Canada also are top producers.
And Ms. Krol’s ammonite dealer — Curt Heher, the chief operations officer for the Rare Earth Mining Company of Trumbull, Conn. — noted that jewelers sometimes favor patterns that are found in specific deposits.
One such special pattern can be found in the cabochons cut from Marston Marble, a trade name for a limestone filled with tiny tea- and cream-color ammonites that is found in what is now the English county of Somerset. Mr. Heher said he sold most of the 94 pairs and 80 individual Marston stones that he brought to the annual Tucson Gem and Mineral Show in February, and his own supplier has told him that the deposit now is exhausted.
And some jewelers like ammolite, a rare rainbow-hue nacre that formed during the fossilization of some ammonite shells in what is now the Canadian province of Alberta.
Amarjeet Grewal, the president and a co-owner of Korite, a mine near Lethbridge, Canada, that producers ammonite fossils as well as the majority of the world’s known gem-grade ammolite, said the wholesale price of the gemstone has increased substantially in recent years. For example, a teardrop-shape ammolite of 22 millimeters by 13 millimeters (0.8 inches by 0.5 inches) sold for $386 in 2003 and then for $960 in 2022.
“If you like blue or you like red, you can get sapphires or rubies,” Ms. Grewal said. “With ammolite, you can get all the colors in one stone.”
Andrea Friedenson, a vintage and antique jewelry dealer in Massachusetts, said she still thought about what she called a “dream ring” from the 1970s that she did not win at a recent auction. The high-karat gold piece featured a mysteriously inky ammolite.
“Like how dark opals have flashes of color in their depths — it was a whole universe in there, ” she said.
The post Ammonites Are Prehistoric but Their Appeal Is a Modern Thing appeared first on New York Times.
