Natural Beauty
By: Allston McCradyAugust 08, 2008
Island Jewels: Gogo Ferguson's jewelry is cast from a variety of natural objects, including raccoon penis bones and rattlesnake ribs. credit: Terry Kuzniar
When the jewelry designer Gogo Ferguson was introduced to Bill Clinton at a cocktail party on Martha’s Vineyard, she could only wonder why he kept staring at her earrings. Did he know she made them from raccoon penis bones? She didn’t ask. Actually, Bill and Hillary Clinton are part of a cadre of A-listers who own Ferguson’s jewelry. Others include Isabella Rossellini, Laura Bush, Goldie Hawn, and Carly Simon. Ferguson also designed the wedding bands for the late John F. Kennedy, Jr., and his wife, Carolyn. Like the majority of Ferguson’s creations, the rings were cast from the bones of wild animals—in this case, rattlesnake ribs. The roots of Ferguson’s art lie in her childhood. A Carnegie descendant, she spent her early years shuffling between a Massachusetts harbor town and the family retreat on Cumberland Island, Georgia. At the time, the family owned the majority of the remote 40,000-acre island. “I remember the roar of cicadas at night, and the sounds of wild turkeys roosting, shifting and shuffling in oak trees outside my bedroom window.” Her grandmother Lucy Ricketson Ferguson was a passionate amateur naturalist and led the children on bareback horse rides through the dense forest. “My grandmother taught me how to notice things as a young child: bird tracks, deer tracks, horse skeletons, lichen on trees, the pattern on flounder. Alligator and horse skulls from the island always graced our fireplace.” Ferguson first experimented with making jewelry for herself out of found bones and shells. She started with a cluster of rattlesnake ribs, joined at the center by rattlesnake vertebrae (now her logo). Friends admired her work, and she started taking commissions. When the late Howard Gilman, a prominent philanthropist from nearby White Oak Plantation, ordered roughly $10,000 worth of jewelry, Ferguson knew she was onto something. But the bones themselves were fragile, so she learned how to cast them in various metals using lost wax casting, an ancient process used by the Egyptians. A series of molds are created with rubber, then wax, before 14K gold or silver is injected. The result, which may be anything from a necklace made from the sternum bones of an armadillo to a bracelet made from alligator toe digits, retains the intricate detail of the original object. These days, her jewelry is carried in boutiques and galleries all over the globe, and in November a display of her work will be exhibited in Atlanta’s High Museum of Art. I first met Ferguson and her husband, David, on the grounds of the Greyfield Inn, the historic family property on Cumberland Island, which now operates as an upscale retreat. We shucked roasted oysters by an outdoor fire tended by the inn’s resident naturalist and talked about her travels to Mexico and Morocco. The next night, Gogo and David showed up with freshly gathered clams and served them to the inn’s guests at cocktail hour. The couple once served an entire Thanksgiving dinner with local delicacies: venison, wild pork, oysters, bread made from roasted acorn flower, toasted seaweed. It’s easy to become enamored with Ferguson’s lifestyle—her devotion to Cumberland Island, her down-to-earth accessibility, her travel lust, her passion for conservation and sustainability, her energy (Go! Go!). “People visit my home and like what they see, so I’ve developed a line of items that you might find in my own living room: clutches, serving utensils, ceramics, fabrics, leather journals, card holders, wine toppers.” Soon, her clients will be able to purchase chopsticks cast from the serrated tails of horseshoe crabs, and clasps made from tarpon cheekbones. In addition to silver and gold, Ferguson has added Alpaca to her metals: a mixture of copper, nickel, and zinc (a lightweight, affordable alternative to increasingly costly precious metals). Ferguson splits her time between her studio on Cumberland Island, her studio in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico, and her main studio at her store on St. Simons Island, Georgia, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling drawers of shells, bones, seedpods, and stones. But she’d rather be off scouring the beaches and forests for future inspiration. “What most would step over on the tide line,” says Ferguson, “I see in a completely different light.”
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