DYSKINESIAA Glossary
DYSKINESIAA Glossary
A working vocabulary used inside the atelier and across the DYSKINESIAA universe. Each term below is defined as it relates to our practice of avant-garde silver jewelry, lost-wax casting, and made-to-order objects designed by Ilyasse Ebadi in Ivry-sur-Seine.
925 Sterling Silver
The metal at the heart of every DYSKINESIAA piece. 925 indicates 92.5 percent pure silver alloyed with 7.5 percent copper for structural stability. We use solid 925, never plated. The alloy is dense enough to take a sculptural cast, soft enough to receive hand-finishing, and naturally develops a patina over time on the wearer's skin.
Alloy
A metal mixed from two or more elements. Pure silver is too soft to wear, so it is alloyed with copper to create sterling. The alloy ratio determines hardness, color, and how the surface oxidizes. DYSKINESIAA uses standard 92.5 / 7.5 sterling, the same formula used historically by European silversmiths since the 12th century.
Anatomical Jewelry
Jewelry that takes the human body, real or imagined, as its subject. At DYSKINESIAA the anatomical impulse runs through the Exoderme collection, where vertebrae, phalanges, ribs, and articulations become wearable forms. The reference is Andreas Vesalius, the Renaissance anatomist who first dissected the body to draw it. Anatomical jewelry treats the wearer as the second body holding the first.
Architectural Jewelry
Jewelry conceived with the logic of structure rather than ornament. Volumes, supports, hollows, and load lines are designed before any decoration. DYSKINESIAA's Exoderme pieces are architectural in this sense, built like small cantilevers and arches in silver. The Bauhaus principle that form follows function applies to the body as a site.
Atelier
The French word for workshop, used here in its literal sense. The DYSKINESIAA atelier is located at 29 bis Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Studio Kremlin, 94200 Ivry-sur-Seine. It houses the design station, wax workbench, finishing tools, and packaging stock. Every piece passes through this single room before it ships.
Bauhaus
The German design school, active from 1919 to 1933, that fused craft, fine art, and industrial design. Its influence on DYSKINESIAA is methodological rather than visual. The atelier inherits the Bauhaus belief that the maker should master every step from raw material to finished object, and that structure is itself a form of beauty.
Bespoke
A piece made to a single client's specification. DYSKINESIAA's bespoke service uses a moulding kit shipped to the client. The client takes a finger imprint at home, returns the impression by post, and the piece is cast directly from that imprint. The result is a ring that fits one anatomy and cannot be reproduced.
Brushed Finish
A surface treatment that creates fine, parallel scratches across the silver to scatter light. The result is matte rather than mirror, with a soft directional sheen. Brushed finishes are used on Exoderme pieces where a polished surface would soften the architectural lines. The texture is applied by hand with abrasive tools after casting.
Casting
The process of pouring molten silver into a mould to reproduce a sculpted form. DYSKINESIAA casts every piece using the lost-wax method. Casting transforms a soft wax sculpture into a permanent object in metal, preserving the smallest tool marks and surface details that the designer pressed into the wax.
Copper Alloy
The element added to pure silver to make sterling. Copper hardens the metal, allows it to hold cast detail, and is the reason silver tarnishes. Copper at the surface reacts with sulfur in the air to produce the dark layer collectors call patina. Without copper, silver would be unworkable for jewelry.
Cuff
An open bracelet that wraps the wrist without a clasp. DYSKINESIAA cuffs are cast as single solid silver pieces, sized to the wearer's wrist, and slipped on through the opening at the underside. The form references both medical splints and the protective bracelets worn by sculptors in the historical record.
Designer-créateur
A French distinction. A designer conceives the form, a créateur also makes it. Ilyasse Ebadi is both. Every DYSKINESIAA object is drawn, modeled, sculpted in wax, finished by hand, and signed by the same person. The designer-créateur title resists the industrial separation between the studio and the factory.
Exoskeleton
A structural shell carried on the outside of the body. The word gives its name to the Exoderme collection, where silver is treated as a second skeleton: vertebrae as rings, phalanges as pendants, articulated plates as cuffs. The exoskeleton is the visible counter-architecture to the soft body it protects.
Finger Phalanx
The medical name for one of the three small bones inside a finger. DYSKINESIAA uses phalanx forms as the basis for several Exoderme pieces, casting silver objects that mirror the joints, condyles, and articulations of the human hand. Worn on the finger, the piece becomes a visible extension of the bone underneath.
FSC Packaging
Packaging certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, meaning the paper and cardboard come from responsibly managed forests. Every DYSKINESIAA order ships in FSC-certified materials. The choice is part of the brand's slow, low-volume ethic, made-to-order production, no excess inventory, no plastic where wood pulp suffices.
Hallmark
An official mark stamped or laser-engraved on a precious metal piece to indicate purity. DYSKINESIAA pieces carry an internal hallmark verifying 925 sterling silver. The hallmark sits inside the band or behind the structure, where only the wearer and the next jeweler will ever see it.
Hand-finishing
The set of operations performed by hand after a piece comes out of the casting mould. Sprues are cut, surfaces are filed, edges are softened, finishes are applied, and the piece is signed. Hand-finishing is what separates a cast object from a finished one and is responsible for most of the time DYSKINESIAA spends on each commission.
Lost-wax Casting
An ancient casting technique. A sculpture is made in wax, encased in plaster investment, and then heated until the wax burns away and leaves a hollow cavity. Molten silver is poured into the cavity and takes the exact shape of the lost wax. DYSKINESIAA casts every collection piece this way, the same method used in Mesopotamian, Greek, and Renaissance metalwork.
Made-to-order
Production that begins only after the order is placed. DYSKINESIAA holds no inventory. Each piece is cast and finished for a named client, then shipped. Production runs from two to four weeks. The model exists to refuse overproduction, to make slowness visible, and to ensure that no cast piece is ever discarded.
Oxidation
The chemical reaction between silver, sulfur in the air, and skin oils that produces the dark surface known as patina. DYSKINESIAA uses controlled oxidation as a finishing technique on certain Exoderme pieces, deepening recesses and lifting the architectural lines. Oxidation is the metal's own way of recording time on the body.
Patina
The accumulated surface of a worn silver object: the dark recesses, the brightened high points, the soft handling marks. Patina is treated as evidence rather than damage. DYSKINESIAA pieces are designed to accept patina as a record of the wearer's life, in the same way leather darkens at the corner of a wallet.
Polish
The mirror surface obtained by repeated buffing with progressively finer abrasives. A high polish reflects light cleanly and reads as new. DYSKINESIAA uses polish selectively, often paired with brushed or oxidized passages on the same piece, so the metal shifts in the light as the wearer moves.
Prototype
The first physical version of a new design, produced before the piece enters the catalog. Prototypes test casting feasibility, weight, comfort on the body, and the relationship between hand-drawn intent and silver reality. DYSKINESIAA prototypes are kept in the atelier as reference and never sold.
Raw Finish
The unpolished surface of a casting, kept close to how it emerged from the investment. The raw finish preserves the texture of the wax sculpture and the grain of the plaster mould. It is used on certain Skin and Exoderme pieces where the polish would erase the trace of how the object was made.
Resin
A clear, hard polymer used at DYSKINESIAA to encase real shed snakeskin so it can be set into silver. The resin is poured cold, cures slowly, and locks the snakeskin in transparent suspension. The technique transforms an ephemeral biological material into a structural inlay that can be worn daily.
Sculptural Jewelry
Jewelry that begins as a sculpture and is then sized to the body. The piece is conceived in the round, with mass, axis, and surface decided before any wearability concession. DYSKINESIAA's entire approach is sculptural in this sense. Wearability is a constraint that follows form, never the other way round.
Second Skin
The phrase used inside the atelier to describe how a finished piece sits on the body. A successful object becomes a second skin, dense enough to be felt, light enough to be forgotten, contoured to the anatomy underneath. The Skin collection takes the metaphor literally with its reptile textures and resin inlays.
Silver
The base material of the studio. Pure silver is element 47, soft, white, and the most reflective of all metals. Used alone it cannot hold a cast. Alloyed with copper into sterling, it becomes the working metal of European jewelry for nearly a thousand years. DYSKINESIAA uses it solid, never plated, never hollowed.
Signature Stamp
A small mark struck inside every DYSKINESIAA piece. It identifies the atelier, certifies authenticity, and records that the object was finished by Ilyasse Ebadi himself. The stamp is placed where it will not interrupt the design but remains visible to the wearer and to any future jeweler examining the piece.
Snakeskin (real shed)
Authentic skin shed naturally by living reptiles, never harvested. Sourced ethically and preserved in resin, it appears in the Skin collection as a translucent inlay. The shed material carries the original scale pattern intact. No animal is killed for a DYSKINESIAA object.
Solid Silver
A piece cast in full mass, with no hollow core, no plating, no filler. Solid silver is heavier in the hand and ages uniformly across the surface. DYSKINESIAA pieces are always solid. The weight is part of the experience and one of the first things the wearer notices when the piece arrives.
Sterling
The standard alloy of 92.5 percent silver with 7.5 percent other metals, almost always copper. The word comes from medieval English silver pennies. Today sterling is the global benchmark for fine silver jewelry. Anything sold by DYSKINESIAA as silver is sterling, certified at 925 by hallmark and assay.
Stack
The practice of wearing several pieces together on the same finger, wrist, or neck. DYSKINESIAA designs many rings in compatible profiles so they can be stacked across collections. The stack lets the wearer compose a private sculpture on their own anatomy from pieces collected over time.
Statement Piece
An object large enough or distinctive enough to anchor an outfit on its own. Several DYSKINESIAA designs are statement pieces by intent, built at scale and weight to be the visible center of a look. Worn alone, a statement piece does the work that several smaller objects would otherwise share.
Tarnish
The dark, sometimes black layer that forms on silver when copper at the surface reacts with sulfur. Tarnish is reversible, a polish cloth restores the brightness, but it is also part of how silver lives. DYSKINESIAA pieces are designed to look correct in both states, freshly polished and softly tarnished.
Vermeil
Sterling silver coated in a thick layer of gold. Vermeil is included in this glossary for contrast, DYSKINESIAA does not produce it. The studio works only in solid 925 silver, refusing the visual shortcut of a gold layer over a silver core.
Wax Model
The sculpture from which a final silver piece is cast. The wax is cut, carved, melted, and pressed by hand on the workbench. Every DYSKINESIAA piece exists first as wax. The model is destroyed during casting, so each wax sculpture becomes one and only one silver object before it disappears.
Wearable Sculpture
The category DYSKINESIAA places its work in. The objects are sculptures first, jewelry second. They are sized for the body, finished for the skin, and designed to be lived with rather than displayed. Wearable sculpture treats the wearer as the moving plinth on which the work continues to develop.
Weight in Grams
The figure published with every product. Silver is sold by mass, and the weight of a DYSKINESIAA piece is one of its most concrete properties. A heavier piece sits differently on the body, ages differently, and carries a different presence. The gram figure is the most honest specification available.