What We Heart

Blood Milk Jewelry

by Amy Strauss

$31-$151 at Mew Gallery, 906 Christian St., 215-625-2424, bloodmilk.etsy.com

"It is believed that Roman soldiers gave these gemstones as gifts to their loves when they went away to war," says local designer J.L. Schnabel of one of her romantic, reconstructed antique necklaces. "The threads [within the stone] were the hairs of Venus, meant to bind the lovers together." She found the small rutilated quartz tear at an estate sale in New York of a woman who went insane in the 1950s.

A frequent visitor to antique shops and estate sales, Schnabel uses her rescued vintage oddities to create Blood Milk, a delicate jewelry line made of re-imagined heirloom accessories, each of which arrives with a based-on-true-events printed story that allows the new owner to play dress-up in another's deep and dark romantic past.

"I like to think of my pieces as haunted talismans," says the mysterious designer, who recently began selling at Mew following her macabre exhibit of femmes fatales portraits last month. "Each piece is haunted by its previous life, yet also has deeper meaning by the stones and histories I add and create for them."