When I was little, my favorite candy in the world was the Candy Necklace. There was something about the colors and being given a piece of jewelry and the fact that I could eat it. They probably didn’t taste very good, but – heck – I was 3 or 4 years old; what did I know? I did know they were colorful and I loved timing how long I would wear it before I would eat it. There is a playfulness to the ability to transmorph the wearable into an edible. It was an act of magic.

Much was the surprise when I went gallery hopping last week and called upon Abrams Claghorn Gallery in Albany, California to check on my own jewelry inventory when I spied a table of chocolates from The Xocolote Bar, an artisanal chocolate shop located in nearby North Berkeley. Besides the classic, rectangle shaped bars, several molded offerings were available: a Venus of Willendorf, a chocolate Buddha, and then… I saw it: a chocolate-shaped diamond. It was a necklace. A piece of wearable, edible art.

Abrams Claghorn Gallery, as both a recurring exhibition space as well as an area devoted to functional art, like the kind I make: jewelry, clay, wood, textiles… The owner of the gallery, Robert Abrams, had begun offering some of the locally-produced chocolate when the collaboration took place. He suggested, since the gallery was filled with such a bounty of resplendent jewelry, why not include some that could be eaten as well? Besides the singular diamond-shaped necklace, a “strand” of gems made from chocolate is also available – both strung on edible licorice.

I am a happy girl, once again.