Once she selects stones based on their unorthodox beauty and form - she prefers "rough" and organic shapes - and also how they relate to specific narratives, she casts the mountings in solid silver, using traditional techniques. Lacquering then follows, creating a variety of unusual textures and hues such as a shiny opaque pink similar to plastic or bubblegum (Acidae Lili Pervertus), an iridescent green-gold that evokes the shimmering depths of a beetle's wing (Cana Bisextem Now), and a dense matte scarlet that resembles powdered pigment (Opiom Velourosa Purpra). Finally, to underscore the nature of the object that each supports, strikingly patterned and mottled hard stones like jasper, rhyolite, agate, petrified wood, and chalcopyrite are sculpted into solid bases or hollow containers.
The astonishing results blur the distinctions between the real and the artificial, the beautiful and the grotesque, the subtle and the excessively baroque. Provocative in form and content, de Castellane has indeed created perverse treasures for perverse times.
