“Hadestown” Inspired
Hadestown earrings
I’m very proud to share that I absolutely LOVE Greek mythology (thanks Percy Jackson), but I’m very disappointed to share that I had never listened to or watched the Broadway musical, Hadestown.
It wasn’t until I started sharing some of my earring designs on Reddit that I finally got around to it. I had shared my Phantom of the Opera earrings on the “Broadway” thread, and started receiving requests for new designs! The first one was Hadestown so I immediately went to listen to the Original Broadway Cast Recording… thank goodness!
I fell in love with the music and was so excited to find out that the musical centered around the Greek hero, Orpheus, and his epic love, Eurydice. After listening to the whole album, I had a million ideas and began sorting through my favorite ones.
I landed on a design that would honor both the Hadestown musical and the Greek mythology behind it. First, the color scheme and design of the earrings are directly inspired by the Hadestown playbill. The playbill has a dark background with a hand holding a single red carnation. The black stones and red bead mimic that set up.
Instead of using a traditional red carnation bead, I chose to use a red pomegranate seed bead. It keeps the main color of red in the earrings, but it serves as an allegory to Persephone who spends half of the year in the underworld due to these seeds. The red pomegranate seed bead is encased by the black stones, which makes it feel trapped or buried between the stones. Orpheus would have also felt this way as he had to go to the depths of the Earth to find Eurydice.
The song “Epic II” opens with these lyrics referring to Hades: “King of silver, King of gold.” I wanted to have both of these materials in the earring without looking tacky so I chose a main gold wire base with small, silver beads separating the black stones.
There are four sections of black stones (separated by the silver beads) which represent the four seasons that are supposed to cycle throughout the year and the seasons that Orpheus is trying to bring back with his song.
The story of Orpheus and Eurydice is a classic and timeless story. Their epic love has been spoken and sung about for centuries and will continue to be shared. The infinity sign that keeps the earrings together represents that timelessness.
The song that accompanies the earrings: “Wait for Me”
