How exciting indeed that Jillian Jak & Meek Mud are collaborating to create a unique range of jewellery with beautiful hand crafted ceramics and silver.
Tamika Bannister of Meek Mud creates the tactile ceramics with black clay and peacock glaze, Jillian Jak elevates the pieces with her silversmithing to create a true Tasmanian piece as rare and beautiful as the Pencil Pies themselves.
This range is inspired by "The Little Pine Lagoon" surrounded by the beautiful Pencil Pines a popular fishing and walking lake on the Tasmanian highlands and of my favourite place to be surrounded by these wonderful endemic trees.
About Pencil Pines.
A close relative of the King Billy pine, the pencil pine is largely restricted to sub-alpine areas above 800 metres. Like the King Billy pine, the pencil pine is a Gondwanan species and is often located around tarns, streams and lakes because of its intolerance to fire. Pencil pines can reach ages in excess of 1200 years, but have little chance of recovery after a fire due to their very poor ability to survive fire, regrow from seedlings or suckers post fire, or disperse seeds more than a few meters from the parent tree. The trees are conical in shape with a markedly tapering trunk.
Pencil pines are known to clonally reproduce through suckering, with some whole stands likely to be genetically identical. This means that such stands are genetic clones which are likely to be thousands of years old.
Common name: Pencil pine
Scientific name: Athrotaxis cupressoides
Made in Tasmania
