2026 responsible design Challenge
Anna Nearburg
Anna Nearburg is the owner of Stone Everett in Ghent, New York.
After reading Mara’s story, earrings were the first thing that came to mind for me. They felt right for someone with an active lifestyle. They’re something she can wear anywhere without worrying about damaging them. The stones themselves also spoke to me as a pair of earrings, and my first idea was to create something that evoked a river. That concept shifted as I worked, but the sense of movement and flow stayed with the design.
I settled on hoops that will be cuttlefish cast, an ancient direct casting technique with a strong connection to water. I loved the idea of using a process tied to the sea to mirror the story’s theme of movement. The texture of the silver will come directly from the cuttlefish casting, giving the surface a natural, raw quality. The circular shape of the hoops also represents the cyclical nature of life—birth, death, and all the stages we move through over time. I wanted the stones to feel like part of that circular motion, almost as if they were carried along in the current.
The arrangement of the stones grew out of both the color story and the symbolism. The moss agates point downward while the andalusites point upward, framing the empty space of the loop. That space became important to me—a kind of vessel for rebirth and for reconsidering one’s life and the changes we experience. At the same time, some of the decisions were simply aesthetic, responding to what felt balanced and visually compelling.
