Design Notes

The Story Behind Each Piece

Every design begins in the archive. Below, the histories, myths, symbol meanings, and ancient protection symbols that shaped this collection.

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Select a piece to read its story

MARQUISE OF HORUS RING

Horus lost his left eye in battle with Set while avenging his father Osiris. Thoth restored it, and the restored form was called the wedjat, the whole one. The left eye was read as the moon and the right as the sun, so the wound and its healing were watched in the sky every month. This is the heart of the Eye of Horus vs Eye of Ra question: the same form, mirrored, one lunar and one solar.

Egyptians wore the wedjat as an Egyptian amulet against harm and misfortune. It was carved into tomb walls and worn on the body for close to three thousand years.

We designed it to look excavated, as though it had come out of a tomb rather than off a bench. The gold is sculpted and organic, and the marquise stone set as the eye.

It is worn as a statement ring or as a wedding ring, by men or women who want unique rings with an eye catching design and a long history of protection symbolism behind it.

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Gold marquise Horus ring worn on hand against lavender damask, Egyptian civilization jewelry reborn
Eye of Horus offering relief carved in stone at Kom Ombo, among the talisman symbols that signify protection
Pencil sketch of the Marquise of Horus ring in 18k, where fine art jewelry begins on paper

ETERNAL MOTHER PENDANT

Aset (referred to as Isis by the Greeks) was worshipped in Egypt for over three thousand years and her following later spread across the Mediterranean. She appears throughout Egyptian art as a kneeling figure with her wings spread, a protective posture carved onto sarcophagi and tomb walls to shelter the dead.

The story behind that posture is the oldest one Egypt told. When Set murdered Osiris and scattered him, it was Aset who searched the length of the country, gathered what was left, and put him back together. She was the most skilled magician among the gods, and she used that skill to restore her husband and to conceive their son. She raised Horus alone in the marshes of the Delta, hidden from the man who had killed his father, and when a scorpion struck the boy she healed him herself. Every protective symbol Egypt produced traces back through her hands. Among symbols for strength and resilience, seldom are not this old.

Her worship absorbed and was absorbed by other figures over time, including Hathor in Egypt, and Venus and Aphrodite in the Roman world. Her temple at Philae was still receiving worshippers into the sixth century, long after the rest of Egypt's gods had gone quiet. Nothing outlasted her.

This goddess pendant takes that winged kneeling form and reduces it to a single sculpted disc, an Egyptian goddess sculpture in miniature, goddess jewelry in its oldest sense. The crown references the horned solar headdress she is shown wearing in later depictions. Her kneeling posture is creation. Her uplifted wings are invocation.

This was the first piece Amora Adera made, and it remains the one the house is built around.

A modern relic for those who remember that feminine divinity lives in us across time.

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Gold Isis pendant draped over a winged goddess papyrus, among ancient Egyptian jewels reimagined
Design sketches of the winged goddess pendant in the studio notebook, from artifact to 18k
Gold Isis medallion layered with rope and box chains on a neckline, boho necklaces styled

MESKEL RING

Meskel is the Amharic word for cross. Ethiopian crosses are built from interwoven latticework, a tradition in which a single line is folded back through itself until the pattern closes with no beginning and no end. No two are alike, and each Ethiopian region has its own recognizable cross style. The Ethiopian cross meaning lives in the geometry itself: a single line with no beginning and no end, eternity made visible. The same lattice discipline shapes our Bereka Pendant, where an Amharic blessing closes in a figure eight.

This ring translates that geometry into a band. The pattern is cut into the face rather than applied to it, so the lattice reads as part of the metal, the way the churches at Lalibela were cut down into the rock rather than built up from it.

Meskel is also the name of a festival held every September, the oldest continuously observed holiday in the country, where those crosses are carried in procession. The metalwork in them is so intricate that they are unmistakably Ethiopian.

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Gold Meskel with blue sapphires worn with denim, boho style rings stacked on hand
Ethiopian Orthodox priest in ceremonial crown holding a processional cross, Ethiopian crosses at Meskel
Meskel ring sketches with lattice cross faces drawn in graphite across the notebook

TIBEB SHIELD SIGNET

Imagine stepping onto a battlefield with a symbol you genuinely believed could keep you alive.

This is not modern movie fiction. For centuries across the Mediterranean, North Africa, Kabbalah, and the Islamic world, warriors, scouts, and marksmen carried a specific geometric talisman known as the Seal of Solomon.

This ring is designed around Ethiopia's historic rendition of the Seal of Solomon. Rooted in Ethiopia's Solomonic history, healing scrolls are a form of Ethiopian sacred art which depict Solomon's seal as an eight-pointed star with four watchful guardian eyes; the points of the star reference wings of archangels and the eyes a motif of vigilance. These protective manuscripts were drawn and prepared by priest-scholars, with the intention of protecting an individual from harm and ill will.

The Metropolitan Museum preserves 19th-century gunpowder flasks and warriors' cartridge boxes engraved with The Seal of Solomon. It was a protective device meant to deflect bad fortune, blind enemy aim, and hold chaos at bay in moments of pure survival.

We apply this design to the signet ring, one of the oldest forms in jewelry. A seal worn on the hand where, historically, men pressed into wax or clay to sign what mattered. Contracts, letters, orders. Traditionally worn on the pinky or the ring finger.

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Gold Tibeb signet beside the Ethiopian healing scroll photograph, a custom signet ring in the vigilance tradition
Eight point star studies for the Tibeb signet ring jewelery face, guardian geometry in pencil
Gold signet ring and dome rings worn with hammered bangles, hand breaking dark water

MARQUISE OF HORUS PENDANT

Horus lost his left eye in battle with Set while avenging his father Osiris. Thoth restored it, and the restored form was called the wedjat, also written udjat, the whole one. Egyptians wore it as an amulet necklace against harm, misfortune, and the evil eye, and among ancient Egyptian amulets none was more common.

The eye was also read as six parts, each tied to a sense and to a unit fraction. The inner corner is smell at 1/2. The pupil is sight at 1/4. The eyebrow is thought at 1/8. The left side is hearing at 1/16. The curved tail is taste at 1/32. The teardrop is touch at 1/64.

Together those fractions total 63/64 rather than a complete whole. The missing part stands for divine completion, healing, and sacred restoration, the piece that comes from outside the self. In designing this pendant we sought to honor those ancient proportions as closely as possible, and with them the eye's associations with protection, healing, balance, and renewed wholeness, a tradition of eye of horus jewelry three thousand years old. The eye is set as a single marquise stone rather than a drawn line.

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Gold Horus pendant resting on an ancient Egyptian udjat eye fraction card, hand finished bezel
Model wearing the gold Horus pendant in layered egyptian necklace styling on bare neckline
Working sketches of the Eye of Horus pendant with hidden bail measurements to scale

BEREKA PENDANT

“May blessing endure for all eternity. Amen.”
ālemi le’ālemi lezele’ālemi āmēni, bereket
አለም ለአለም ለዘለአለም አሜን - በረከት

The kingdom of Aksum recorded itself in stone. The Ezana Stone, raised in the fourth century, carries a royal inscription cut in Ge'ez alongside Greek and Sabaean. The Ethiopian Amharic script on this pendant reflects this same historical style. The Amharic prayer on the pendant is laid out in a figure eight so the blessing reads without beginning or end, and the surface is left rough, closer to worked stone than polished gold.

The blessing tradition continues in our Meskel Ring, the Ethiopian cross cut as a band.

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Polaroid of the Ezana stone inscription at Axum, the ethiopian jewelry lineage behind the Bereka
Bereka pendant sketches in the design notebook, an Egyptian cartouche form holding a blessing
Bereka Pendant in solid 18k gold, Amharic blessing tablet on black silk, a cartouche necklace form

TUAREG GUARDIAN HOOPS

The Tuareg are an Amazigh people of the central Sahara, in Niger, Mali, Algeria, and Libya, whose caravans carried the trans-Saharan trade north into Morocco for centuries. Their silverwork is made by hereditary smiths who hold the designs within their families, and the forms are protection symbols, read rather than decorative.

These hoops reinterpret a historic protective form of evil eye jewelry through a fine jewelry lens. The pointed ends, drawn from traditional earring silhouettes known as elkiss or eraf wa n tesabit, have long been worn as evil eye protection jewelry, guarding against misfortune and illness.

This design preserves the original engraved character and distinctive pointed shape of the source form, while refining the scale into a more delicate, elevated version suited to modern luxury wear. The result is a piece that honors the cultural symbolism and anthropological significance of the original design while offering a sculptural, wearable expression of protection and prosperity.

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Tuareg Guardian Hoops in solid 18k gold with emerald drops, evil eye jewelry of the Sahara
Polaroids of Berber Tuareg women wearing Tizabaten hoops, the berber jewelry of the Sahara
Tuareg hoop earring sketches with rhombus drop studies, Amazigh jewelry drawn in graphite

TIBEB SHIELD PENDANT

Ethiopian healing scrolls were made by church-trained scribes. A scroll was written for one named person and cut to that person's height, so the object matched the body it was made for. Some were hung as protective symbols for the home. Others were rolled into a leather case and worn around the neck.

The scrolls carry geometric diagrams, talisman symbols that signify protection, meant to guard the owner against illness and misfortune, built around eye motifs that appear across the Mediterranean and North Africa in the same protective role.

This pendant takes that form off the parchment and into gold. The eight-point structure references the wings of four guardian archangels, while the four stones are placed as symbolic watchers, a motif associated with vigilance and spiritual safeguarding in Ethiopian sacred art.

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Ethiopian healing scroll painting with guardian eyes at each point, symbols for protection drawn
Tibeb shield pendant sketches in hexagon frames, a symbol for protection cut for wear
Gold Tibeb shield on lichen covered stone outdoors, a protection talisman in daylight