Angie Olami has combined her signature ancient roman glass shards with old computer parts, semiprecious stones, and other industrial reconstituted components to create TOTALLY GREEN, a collection as beautiful as it is gentle to the earth.

Angie Atkins, designer and owner of Angie Olami, and her Israeli partner, Avihu Zur, designer and owner of Musiam Jewelry, developed the idea together last winter, when it was disconcertingly warm in New York. “We’d read a lot about how dirty the jewelry business really was, despite our having felt good about using all natural materials – between mining and refining, all this beauty we were creating was actually leaving quite a scar. I realized the roman glass shards we work with were really 2000 year old recycled garbage – I mean it is gorgeous, but it is garbage – so we were already half way there,” said Atkins. Unlike many of the first generation recycled products, Atkins and Zur wanted to make their jewelry as artsy, fashion forward, and elegant as their other work – “not just junk on hemp.”

They worked with metal refineries to develop recycled silver and copper so that every material in TOTALLY GREEN is just that – without impact on the environment. The copper is 100% recycled and the silver is at least 80% recycled. In fact, since there is no difference in the quality or look of the silver, Angie Olami has converted ALL of her designs and collections over to using recycled sterling, not just TOTALLY GREEN.

“Actually the more I studied what was inside a computer or on a motherboard, the more I realized there was a high artistic sensibility to all these industrial things that run our lives that we never get to see or think about,” said Zur. Combining 2000 year old glass – the high tech of its day – with diodes, bezel set pieces of motherboard, and recycled metals, TOTALLY GREEN strikes an intriguing balance between gallery quality jewelry and funky, cutting edge, earth friendly adornment. It leaves a trace, but the right kind.