Bead and Cowrie Jewelry

Born in March 2020, Bead and Cowrie is a devotional and ritual practice shaped by pandemic time, Black American 90s imagination, and diasporic remembrance.

It moves between cowrie shells and beads, playground colorways and ancestral currencies—where altar meets jump rope, and adornment becomes embodied ritual.

Created as a love letter to my inner child and neurodivergent mind, each piece treats the body as sacred technology. We are the first altars. To wear this work is to participate in a living archive of Black futurity, memory, protection, and pleasure—small art pieces carrying sovereign intention across time, trend, and geography.

bead because they are the currency and protection of Black femmes

cowrie because it is the divinating currency of my people

bead + cowrie honors the tightest of coils
the almighty afro

from jump rope
to hand games and street light get right

to seed plaited fros that carried the depth of who we are across mighty seas