One and Only One: The Hands That Made Them

Some of the bracelets and earrings I keep are not new. I strung them years ago, before everything changed. Every so often I take them out of the drawer and look at them again.

The years I could not make anything

After the stroke there was a stretch of time measured in years when my hand and my eye would not agree. My strength was very low. I could not hold a thought, or a bead, for long — concentration slipped away within minutes. In that long quiet, I understood something I did not want to understand: I would not be able to return to the work I once did.

Looking back at my own hands

Now, when I look at those older strands, what moves me is not the design. It is the fingers that made it. That tiny floral bracelet — every glass flower placed one by one, every crystal set beside it — was strung by hands that were quick and certain. I admire them now the way you admire a stranger's skill. It is a strange thing to feel proud of, and separated from, your own hands.

A craft fades; the work stays

I will be honest: I cannot do that again. Skill leaves the body the way warmth leaves a room — slowly, and then all at once. Some of it has returned to me, but not all, and not the same. What remains is the work itself. The hands fade. The pieces stay.

Why they are "One and Only One"

This is why a few pieces are truly one of a kind. Not only because there is a single one in the world, but because the hands that made them existed once, exactly so. A different day, a different hand, a different piece. When one of these leaves the studio, nothing quite like it can be made again. It is not a marketing line. It is simply the truth of a life.

What you hold

So when you hold a KiiTOS piece that is one of one, you are holding a moment that will not come back: a pair of hands, on one particular afternoon, making the one thing only they could make. That is all I have to give. And it is everything.