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&tDisp=The recycling of materials to create new design has become a familiar if not rhetorical creative strategy symbolising design for sustainability. Although working loosely within this genre, Vaarwerk's design further challenges our assumptions about material value. By associating the enduring worth of precious metals with discarded plastic products, his jewellery extracts beauty embedded in the abandoned, and elicits the creative potential of waste retransformed. However, the only visible evidence of recycled material appears in Vaarwerk's use of discarded product nomenclature described in the work titles, enhancing the incongruity.

In combination, the reused and virgin materials works appear pristine, yet allude to the value of resources in a more symbolic than quantifiable way; the proximity of the wearable object to our skin serving as an intimate, concatenate reminder of things we desire, venerate and discard. The contrary beauty of these works screens the vulnerability of both the environment and the human condition. Vaarwerk continues to  <a href="http://www.vaarwerk.com/project.asp" target="top"><u>explore and reinvigorate the properties of discarded plastics</a></u>  in ways that represent cradle-to-cradle up cycling on an intimate scale.&