Arts + Sciences

Once a year Kate Rutherford returns to the same remote stretch of beach along the northwest coast of North America (she could tell you where but then she’d have to kill you). She brings an old mesh bag that once contained a Black Diamond climbing harness and fills it with stones she finds in the coarse sand. Rutherford is particular about her matériel so it takes about three days to collect a gallon’s worth. The marble-sized stones are dark, oblong, and polished smooth by an eternity of tumbling around in the surf. “You can actually hear the rocks rolling and grinding beneath the surface when the waves are breaking,” Rutherford says.

Rutherford turns the stones into jewelry, earrings and necklaces composed of several pebbles tied vertically from simple black cord or elegant