About the Artist

 

I'm Alex Hume, and Borealis is my fine jewelry portfolio. I'm an artist, goldsmith, jewelry designer, and lover of fine earthen materials. I'm a Taurus sun/Libra moon/Scorpio rising. I'm drawn to stories and story telling and I've always felt most at home and at peace in nature. I love exploring relationships of all kinds. Mythology, archetypes, and natural & cultural history fascinate me. I'm deeply inspired by ancient jewelry and its illustrious legacy as talisman, protector, bringer of good fortune, spiritual amulet, and personal emblem. 

Art and nature have been my lifelong passions. Growing up in downtown Toronto, the daughter of a musician and a writer, I was immersed in the arts from an early age. Through these formative experiences I developed a deep reverence for beauty in all its forms. 

In the early grades my parents purchased a small hobby farm with a beautiful Victorian era farmhouse, just outside of the Ottawa valley in a land both rugged and pastoral – straddling the fertile limestone deposits of the Lake Ontario floodplains and the harsh granite bedrock of the Canadian shield. Towering white pines, creeks teeming with tadpoles and insects, and the gentle topographical undulations left behind by glaciers that swept through 10,000 years ago wove themselves deep into the fabric of my being and left me with a deep yearning to live in connection with the earth.

From the early teen years I discovered jewelry. I spent hours beading and first brought my wares to market at age seventeen. Around this time I enrolled in a jewelry fabrication course at the Royal Ontario Museum. I loved every part of it, but something deep inside me was ignited when we used cuttlefish skeletons to create relief molds for casting metals; an ancient technique used to create sculptural jewelry pieces. I was mesmerized by the molten metal and the transformation from casting grain to multidimensional piece. Of course, it never occurred to me that something as whimsical and magical as jewelry could become my profession…

In college I studied biology, ecology, geology, and environmental policy – and when I discovered forestry, I was hooked. Following graduation I spent a decade working as a Forest Technician, amazing work for the adventurous spirit that took me from coast to coast and everywhere in between, measuring forest regeneration, biodiversity, and carbon deposition; and classifying soils. I met my husband Brendan through this work, and we worked side by side in the bush for years before starting our family.

When my daughters were born, I rediscovered my passion for jewelry - which as it turns out is the perfect confluence of nature and art; my two muses. Working daily with earth’s finest gemstones and most precious metals keeps me in tactile relationship with nature, while creating enduring, wearable works of art taps into my reverence for beauty and story telling – and connects me to something that feels ancient and ancestral. I practice goldsmithing with a traditional approach – no computer software or 3D printing. Instead, I hand craft each piece of jewelry using techniques that have been around since antiquity - hand forging, soldering, and hand carving each piece that leaves my studio.

Borealis was created to fill a void in the fine jewelry market – my aim is to bring you meticulously handcrafted fine jewelry that treads lightly on the earth and makes no compromises on social responsibility. I believe that jewelry carries energy, and integrity at each stage of the manufacturing chain matters greatly.

I work with known origin sapphires that are mechanically mined from shallow alluvial deposits. This means that the journey from mine to market is traceable, and that the extraction process is gentle. The gold I work with is recycled. I'm also able to rework your outdated family heirlooms into new, relevant pieces; upcycling your gold and stones in the process.

For more information about the materials and techniques I use in my designs, please visit Ethos & Approach. For more information about creating a bespoke piece of jewelry and/or re-working a family heirloom, please visit Make it Bespoke. Thank you so much for being here and sharing my love of ethical, handcrafted, fine jewelry!

xoxo,

Alex