Unfettered Adornment is an artisan-crafted jewelry company based in Bali, Indonesia. We focus on quality materials, attentive craftsmanship, & unique design.
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Each creation is fabricated by hand starting with simple sheet metals & wire. We thoughtfully select natural, high quality, untreated stones, and incorporate them into our unique wearable art.
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In a time when the dominant worldview values machinery and mass production -we find the purest joy in creating pieces one by one at the bench, using torch and simple metalsmithing tools.
 

 

 

From a recent interview with  Owner & Designer Kirra Steinbrueck by Seattle Refined :

 

How long have you been designing? What mediums do you work with?
I've been making and designing jewelry for a living for ten years, and I started Unfettered Adornment in 2018. Right now, I work with silver, copper, brass, natural stones. I come from a dance background, so another medium I work with is moving bodies paired with soundscapes and spatial setting! Jewelry work is small, specific, focused, and detailed; balancing it with painting murals and dancing allows me to experience fluid, big, out and open energy.

Tell us about your business.
My business is an extension of my lifestyle and worldview. It encompasses a way of living that I practice, of living organically, honoring the cyclical nature of life and time. It has been my intention from UA's inception to grow slowly, organically, a strong root system so that we may be sustainable in the long run. I'm learning as I go. I'm not here to quickly produce unnecessary accessories into the world and have quick turnover. I'm really here to honor a slower way of living and to not create in excess. I spend time examining where my materials come from and all the people involved in the jewelry production process, including mining of stones and metals and honoring the work and lives of the small-scale jewelry artists I partner with.

What do fashion and style mean to you in terms of art?
I actually don't consider myself a fashion person! I'm deeply curious about the process and practice of adorning our bodies. For me personally, adorning is an act of resistance — it's one way I claim and own my body, practice connection to myself and commitment to my wellbeing, all while challenging a consumerist and capitalist system. When I'm designing jewelry, I don't necessarily think of how things will look on a body. I normally think of how things will feel on a body. Creating art for the body gives me the opportunity to explore this question: What do we value as a society?

I'm interested in authenticity and truth, values based on earth care and connectedness. I don't work with faceted diamonds as they don't align with my value system — they have value because they've been marketed so heavily to us for the last hundred years as part of the picture-perfect American dream. I use jade because it connects me to my Chinese heritage and belief system. I use copper because it holds value in the Indigenous culture of the land I am settled on; I honor that and uplift that. What are our aesthetic values as a society? Do we choose to wear small sparkly delicate jewelry, echoes of conditioning to be demure and compliant people? How do we give ourselves permission to take up more space, to be loud, to be present, to demand equal voice in shaping and steering this life?

What we put on our bodies trickles out into all aspects of our life — how we move through the world, how we show up for ourselves in private spaces, how we take up space in a room, how others view us. I have no desire to be a walking billboard for fast fashion, which is hurting both our planet and our spirits. I want the things on my body and in my surroundings to be connective: created slowly, carefully, in joyful process, by the loving human hands of people who I know, people who are receiving care and support in return. I want the things on my body to be filled with stories, with heart, with compassion, with deep knowing. 

Can you tell us about your artistic process and how the different stages work into it?
My process is very organic and always changing! There are limitations within the world of metal fabrication for what is and isn't possible, so I'm always thinking of my order of operations while designing so I don't come up with some crazy idea that's too labor-intensive or impossible to make. Sometimes design visions come to me randomly or when I'm going to sleep, and I'll sketch them onto paper before they dissipate. Other times I'll sit down with metals and stones in front of me and see if my imagination takes me somewhere. Other times, I start with a basic structure of a necklace or earrings and pair it with a feeling/idea that has been showing up in my world. Recently I've been enjoying taking the basic hoop earring and finding unusual ways to play with it.

I bring my original work with me to Bali every year and have been building relationships there with artisans and small family-run businesses in the silver working village. My work is unusual, so finding artists that are excited to make unusual jewelry hasn't been easy! It can be overwhelming or challenging with the language differences, but is also a process that I enjoy — finding mutuality and connection across cultures, with metal as the commonality. Both parties get to learn and expand. My designs always have personal or universal meaning imbued into them — they're never empty without heart and soul. To me, they often have ties to places or lived experiences. Sometimes those correlations are clear from inception. Other times they become clear later in the design process, while I'm naming or polishing/finishing a piece. And the most beautiful part is that we all have our own correlations and personal meanings when viewing and wearing this art.

Tell us about where the inspiration for your styling/designs comes from.

I am inspired by the incredible metalwork of ancient and earth-based cultures, lately specifically that of Indonesia, where I work with artisans to actualize my designs, as well as the metalwork of peoples from my heritage roots of SE China.

What fashion icons do you have/who's inspired you?

Beyond music, I don't stay super looped in on popular culture or trends. I enjoy staying on the fringe and a bit closer to nature so I can hear my own artistic impulses. That being said, I'm inspired by a few avant-garde artists, including FKA Twigs and Alexander McQueen, tons of femme powerhouses including Beyonce, sculptural artists like Ruth Asawa. Alexander Calder's metalwork. Mostly people not following societal rules and expectations. People living outside of lines. I'm inspired by so many living artists and designers I've had the pleasure to cross paths with who value quality craftsmanship and unusual design. I grew up in proximity to the masterful and rich art of the Indigenous people of the PNW Coast and am constantly inspired by the refined beauty and connectedness of this art and the living people who breathe and birth it.

I grew up on stages. I was a ballet dancer as a child and teen and performed aerial dance throughout my 20s. Movement art has been my core expressive medium for most of my life, and it's greatly informed my work as a jewelry designer. Many of my first designs for Unfettered Adornment were big show-stopping pieces, meant to be brought alive on the body through movement expression and personal/collective storytelling. Spending time in SE Asia throughout the last decade greatly affects my work. It connects me to my heritage homelands and other ways of living outside of American norms. Spending time in Asia helps me see life more clearly and objectively, brings me to understand that there is more than one “right way” to live, that our newly constructed American values are not the absolute. It has shaped my definition of what success is. All of this influences how I choose to conduct my business, how I am in relationship with those that I work with and instructs me on conducting my business in as non-hierarchical and non-linear a manner as I can get away with within a capitalist framework.