reflective images celtic jewelry

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• New mexico

Celtic Jewelry, along with Reflective Jewelry, is a brand of Reflective Images. The company was founded in 1995 under the Creative Director and lead designer, Helen Chantler.

Celtic design is in Helen’s blood. She was born in a small village in England. However, she passed her adolescent and early adult years living in Asia and traveling throughout the world before settling in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1986.

Helen’s designs are inspired by ancient cultures that celebrate the human journey. Her pieces, ranging earring, pendants and bracelets to depictions of animals and birds, are created sculpturally though base relief – cutting out tiny pieces of gold and silver which are overlaid, making textures to create images and intricate knot work motifs. From a design perspective, her pieces are heavily influenced by southwestern jewelry techniques which date back hundreds of years to the Spanish conquistadors.

In describing her work, Helen says, “Jewelry will always be more than just fashion. It is about what is essential and real and what can awaken us now to beauty and connection.”

Celtic jewelry has profound talismanic meaning, and our goal has always been to source the material that we use to make our jewelry as ethically as possible. For nearly ten years, Reflective Images has been using only recycled metals in their production. Recently, we became the first Fairtrade Gold jeweler in the US. That’s like being the first company in in the US to sell Fairtrade Coffee thirty years ago.

Fairtrade Gold is a groundbreaking partnership between jewelers, small scale miners and Fairtrade International. It is mined by small scale mining cooperatives and offers a real lifeline to the otherwise impoverished miners and their communities. Helen’s husband, Marc Choyt, who works alongside Helen in the company, is a pioneer in ethically sourced jewelry and serves as the commercial liaison for Fairtrade Gold in the US for Fairtrade International.

At this point, about 80% of the two tone Celtic pendants, bracelets and earrings is made with Fairtrade Gold. Reflective Images, with its gallery and studio on Baca Street, has been widely recognized for its green and fair business practices. It won a Sustainable Santa Fe award for its triple-bottom-line practices in 2014, a statewide award for Sustainable Leadership in 2012, the 2010 Jewelers That Care national award for ethical leadership in the jewelry sector.

The company have been very active in environmental and business issues. Marc initiated in co-lead the campaign to successfully stop the gold mine in the Ortiz Mountains south of Santa Fe, has served as a board member of Santa Fe’s Green Chamber of Commerce and is actively involved in creating the Turquoise Trail Regional Alliance to protect the Northern Galisteo bio-region, an area south of Santa Fe, from drilling and extraction.

More than any other Celtic jeweler in the world, we create talismanic meaning with ethical sourcing and artisanal handmade design.