Apple Computer Jewelry
If you like how your Mac keyboard feels to the touch, you
may appreciate how the keys look and feel as wearable art.
Pennsylvania artist Stacey Peterson salvages the keys and
even the power button to make necklaces, cuff links, and
other wearable pieces that she sells to eager Apple fans on
her Etsy site.
While Apple continues to produce desirable electronic
devices, other support industries have emerged to provide
cases, sleeves, and peripheral hardware accessories. Like
the T-shirt designers and toymakers who celebrate Apple
culture, Peterson is part of a cottage industry that tries to
meet Apple fans’ needs by giving them a chance to show off
their brand loyalty and emotional connection to the devices.
“I have made a few PC pieces, but most people want
Mac keys in their jewelry,” said Peterson, who learned
her craft at the William Holland School of Lapidary Arts
in Georgia. “I’ve made at least 1,000 pieces, and I’ve sold
almost 800.”
Peterson, who goes by the name Sta-C, makes beau-
tiful, classic jewelry with gemstones and metals, like sterling
silver, preferring to use methods rooted in preindustrialized
times. Her KeyedUp jewelry is sold exclusively on Etsy,
where she has been offering necklaces, earrings, cuff links,
rings, and keychains since 2009.
“I love it when customers give me feedback on how
they love what I’ve made,” Peterson said. “It’s really a person-
ality statement you make when you wear keyboard jewelry.”
Peterson works from what she calls “pockets of chaos”
in her home, careful to keep unrelated jewelry-making mate-
rials separated. The keyboards she finds on eBay and from
other sources are stacked neatly.
She is trying to collect as many keyboards with the old
Apple-logo COMMAND key as possible, but she understands
the complicated history of this old Apple key.
Designers of the COMMAND key wanted to use the Apple
logo to make it easy for users to remember key commands,
but Steve Jobs thought that the company was in danger
of overusing the logo. “There are too many Apples on the
screen,” Jobs said in 1983. “It’s ridiculous. We’re taking the
Apple logo in vain. We’ve got to stop doing that.”
So designers came up with a Swedish-style floral
emblem () for the COMMAND key. The Apple logo returned
to the COMMAND key after Jobs’s departure from Apple in
1986. By 2007, the word command had replaced the Apple
logo on the key.
“I am trying to scoop up as many [COMMAND keys] as
I can find,” Peterson said. If she can find the keys, especially
the circular power key, with the surrounding metal intact, she
can make the keys on her jewelry clickable.
Peterson made her first computer-key jewelry piece
when her daughter was in junior high school and requested
that a piece be made for a friend, using her old laptop. Her
daughter has now graduated from college and is a computer
programmer.
..................Content has been hidden....................
You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.