Brooklyn-based designer Erica Bradbury was first attracted to the "small and portable" aspect of jewelry-making. A trained painter, Bradbury claims she was sick of struggling "to fit paintings into apartments and cars."
The proportionate solution, it turned out, was Species by the Thousands, a collection of vintage-inspired baubles that unite her passion for the Great Outdoors with her fascination with the macabre. With a name big enough to encompass "all the other things" she might want to make in the future—specifically clothing, housewares and books—Bradbury locates her Species' aesthetic in a "1970's craft book, the Halloween section."
Indeed, the focus on nature-inspired iconography (think howling wolves, bobcat toe bones, and shark mouth pendants) combined with the judicious use of "vintage and deadstock materials" like monocle lenses and herckimer diamonds gives the line a feeling of haunted-woods whimsy, made better by Bradbury's cheeky sense of humor. A solid silver "Cyclopse" pendant, for example, features a single monstrous eye-ball with a glinting diamond iris, while the "Mountain" ring might best be described as a hand-carved heap of dirt.
