@mazziodu This is not a citation (way too early in @emefacolejewellery career for that anyway), just a little #tbt with a side order of #gratitude for #jewelryaddict crew. Allow me to frame recent events and rely heavily on beautiful visual aids to buttress my points. When it was announced that Emefa Cole would be the inaugural Curator of Jewellery, Diaspora at the V&A Museum. It is no exaggeration when I say I felt joy to my depths. To use peak London-Girl parlance, Cole "keeps it 💯 ", there is an absence of virtue signaling or clout chasing and even the names of her pieces prompt wearers to go deep. Pictured are the Kla earrings which mean 'soul' in Cole's native tongue and are part of her exquisite and much lauded Erosion series, a body of work that explores materialism, identity, memory - the very essence of life and the hereafter . That Cole will take her new mandate and amplify the previously overlooked but every bit as best-in-class as peers from elsewhere is without doubt. Real recognizes real. Slide 2 is where our personal story begins: roaming the IG Streets during the pandemic made me an outrageous DM slider. I wanted to know more about the Vulcan Series, I also wanted to feature the Ridge ring in a talk I was giving. Cole generously obliged and I gobbled up intel on her process, her commitment to research and passion for the global design community to not merely occasionally spotlight or worse plunder from Black creativity (wherever it was located) but to acknowledge its contribution and place it front and centre in the academy on its own terms. A ring from the Vulcan Series was acquired by the V&A prior to this and there ìs something of serendipity/coincidence/divine providence (delete based on your faith level) about where the story has concluded! Slide 3 a portrait of Cole is the kind of historic image that will mean so much to the next gen and she has previous form in shaking tables (check out her turn @thegoldsmithscompany talk "Gold:A History of Power Prestige and Craftsmanship in West Africa" for 🔥) and Slide 4 is my first article for @wallpapermag on Cole herself. Link in bio. Ever grateful to know you Emefa❤️🇬🇭🙏🏾 #mazzimusings