Published: 19 October 2020
Last updated: 4 March 2024
DESIGNER ZOHAR EDELSHTEIN BUDDE - of Zohar Sculptured Jewellery - is in the final dash of her 14-day Covid-19 quarantine.
Locked inside a Novotel hotel in Sydney, she’s 90 km from her husband and two children at her home in the Blue Mountains, just west of Sydney.
Not that she’s complaining. This is a rare case of someone who has a positive story from this global pandemic.
Yes, she was scared as she flew to take part in the world-famous Paris Fashion Week on a nearly empty plane with passengers and crew wearing masks.
Yes, she spent her entire eight days in ‘the City of Light’ dashing between work and her AirB&B apartment, avoiding every restaurant and cafe in a capital already experiencing “the second wave”, with up to 15,000 positives a day.
And yes, she wondered how long she would be stranded in Paris, unable to get the necessary negative COVID test allowing her to fly home again.
“But now I’m so busy in quarantine,” says Zohar, 44. “I spend my days sending emails, doing Instagram, updating my website.” (Watch video of the glamour and glitz of Paris Fashion Week).
Zohar spent her entire eight days in ‘the City of Light’ dashing between work and her AirB&B apartment, avoiding every restaurant and cafe in a capital already experiencing 'the second wave'.
“I had to overcome huge, huge fear,” Zohar admits. "The fitting was the night before the show. That was when I saw the clothes and the models for the first time.
“But I woke the morning of the show a different person, completely relaxed. It was hectic, and being France, all the models came to be dressed at once. But it was so much fun.”
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If you haven’t heard of Zohar Sculptured Jewellery, join the queue. The Israeli-born scientist, with a masters degree in microbiology from Jerusalem University, has only been a professional jeweller since 2017. Her workshop/studio is within Rex-Livingstone Art + Objects gallery in Katoomba. (She only exhibits in her studio, galleries or online.)
Her designs are unique, consisting of wire and pearls. “To me, a pearl represents the soul of a person, the seed of God,” she explains, while wire symbolises connections in our brains and bodies determining health or ill-health.
Yet from such simple ingredients, Zohar creates extraordinary individual confections: necklaces, earrings, headpieces, rings, and “arm ornaments”.
For the Paris show, she needed to create “40 pieces for eight different looks”. She did so in just three months, while recovering from the lethal bushfires which struck the Blue Mountains last summer, plus the global misery of Covid for most of 2020.
Somehow that’s fitting. Because, as Zohar reveals, her jewellery designs are a triumph of faith and hope over despair. As a child growing up in Israel, she wasn’t religious,” she explains.
“Most of dad’s family perished in Poland during the Holocaust. My maternal grandmother survived a concentration camp, and is now 96, living in Israel.”
Like many Jewish families, “mine lost their faith after the Holocaust…so I didn’t grow up in faith”. But her spirituality was rekindled in India. Unhappy with life and career in Israel, she fled to the sub-continent to study meditation. She stayed two years, until her second Indian visa ran out.
Her mother, Shoshana, offered to pay for a flight from India to Sydney so Zohar could take part in a family reunion: Zohar’s sister had recently moved to Australia. It was only meant to be a fleeting visit. “I landed in Sydney, and met my husband Ravian at a party three days later,” she laughs. They now have two children: Aiyana, 13, and Neriya, 9.
But instead of experiencing maternal joy, Zohar plunged into post-natal depression after both births. It was particularly severe after Neriya’s delivery. “That put me into in a very deep place,” Zohar continues. “But that’s also when I was reconnected to God - and good things started to happen in my life.”
Instead of experiencing maternal joy, Zohar plunged into post-natal depression after both births. That put me into in a very deep place but it's also when I was reconnected to God - and good things started to happen in my life.
Today Zohar is as proud of her Judaism as she is of being a representative of the Israeli Jewish community in the Blue Mountains. “Everything I do is connected to my spirituality,” she says. For years after Neriya’s birth, Zohar sought solace by embracing her creative - as opposed to scientific - talents: without success.
“One day I spoke with God and said, ‘Please help me to bring my beauty into the world’. The very next day I woke up with a very clear feeling.”
While attempting to be a visual artist, Zohar took several shopping trips to Bunnings to buy wires in her creations. “Suddenly I was confronted by all these wires in my hand, thinking, ‘What else can I do with these?’” Her next thought? “I’ll make myself a necklace.”
Soon afterwards, she opened a Hebrew scripture at random and read a passage about jewellery which struck a chord: “Although I had begun using wire and pearls intuitively, I realised I’d been working with universal sources in my soul.”
Making jewellery was integral to her own healing process, she believes. “I went from being very ill to regain my health again. I call that ‘a rewiring of consciousness’.
“Each piece of jewellery I create is a piece of inner transformation. I take a painful memory and rewire it to bring out the beauty, the mercy, the compassion.”
Zohar no longer makes trips to Bunnings to pick up wire. These days she uses silver, 24-carat (yellow) gold or 14-carat rose gold. Incredibly, some pieces use up to 30 metres of wire - though the wearer wouldn’t realise it because they’re so light.
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Since she made her first necklace in 2017, “everything in my jewellery journey has been magical”. Yet her Parisian adventure began in frustration this time last year.
Not only were the terrible sequence of bushfires scorching Australia uncomfortably close to home, but an exhibition that would have showcased her creations was cancelled.
In desperation she applied to an Instagram invitation. “I didn’t even know what I was applying for,” she admits. “If I’d known it was Paris Fashion Week, I wouldn’t have had the courage.”
To her surprise, Zohar received a reply asking if she’d any “runway experience”. Her reply? “No, but I am a quick learner.”
Then came Covid. For safety’s sake, she sent her 40 pieces of jewellery on a separate flight, several days ahead. Her work could have been shown without her. But at the last minute - and with France already experiencing “the second wave” - Zohar booked a risky return flight to Paris, with the full backing of her husband, children and “even my mum”.
Zohar is due to be released from quarantine on Thursday, the first time she will have seen her children since September. Since she left them, the New York-based Flying Solo component of Paris Fashion Week (which featured her jewellery) has been covered in three of the world’s most influential international jewellery magazines: Harper’s Bazaar, Marie-Claire and Elle.
“Now I’m so busy,” Zohar says. “What I needed for my brand awareness was media exposure. Thanks to Paris Fashion Week, I’ve got it.”
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Main image: Zohar (left) and one of her wire pieces of jewellery (courtesy zoharjewellery.com)
