My name is Rumiko and I am a Japanese and Kiwi jewellery artist living in New Zealand with my husband and two teenage boys.

I started making jewellery many years ago when I moved to live in New Zealand from my homeland of Japan. I started with beaded jewellery and macrame type styles of wrapping the beads. This very much appealed to me because I loved mixing the beads and my love of crochet to make unique pieces of jewellery.

Although they were both beautiful and popular, it took a very long time to make each piece. As a typical creative type, I would get a bit bored with making the same thing all the time, and spending so much time on one thing. I wanted to try something different that would allow me to be creative with each piece and not take forever to make! I chose resin!

For me, resin is simple to work with and it is much quicker to create new styles. I love that I can incorporate unusual materials into the resin and that each piece is completely unique and one-of-a-kind. This very much appeals to me as a jewellery artist and creator.

Then I thought about using greenstone. New Zealand greenstone is called pounamu and it is a very special material in New Zealand. Traditionally, greenstone is used for carving and is a sacred material of the New Zealand Maori people; it was used as a sacred material before Europeans arrived and today still has a very important role to play for Maori people in expressing their culture. As a Japanese woman who now calls New Zealand home I wanted to incorporate some of my adopted homeland into my jewellery. So I started using greenstone!

Japanese people traditionally like small, delicate and elegant jewellery but a lot of the jewellery i was finding in New Zealand was much more bold and used larger styles. Particularly the carved greenstone jewellery. While I liked it, it wasn't something that appealed to my Japanese artistic side. So I decided bringing together the traditional materials of New Zealand and the simple elegance of Japan.

I specialise in making jewellery with minute pieces of authentic New Zealand greenstone with elegant and beautiful flakes of pure gold and silver creating tiny worlds of resin in each piece. No two pieces of jewellery can ever be the same, and they are unique just like the people who wear them. For me, this brings my Japanese world and my Kiwi world together in a beautiful and meaningful way.

I am so excited to welcome you to my world and I hope you love my jewellery and my art as much as I do.

Aroha
Rumiko