Real snakeskin in resin, the Skin Collection technique

Where the snakeskin comes from

The Skin Collection at DYSKINESIAA incorporates real snakeskin into a number of pieces. Before the technical process, it is essential to clarify the source. Every fragment of snakeskin used in the studio comes from naturally shed skin, recovered from European reptile reserves and registered breeders working under EU welfare standards. No animal is harmed, no animal is killed, no animal is captured for the purpose of producing material. The skin is what reptiles leave behind when they outgrow their previous covering, a process called ecdysis.

Snakes shed their skin several times a year throughout their lives. The shed skin emerges intact in many species, sometimes turned partially inside out like a discarded sock, retaining the precise scale pattern of the animal it came from. In a controlled reserve setting, these sheds are collected as part of routine care. They would otherwise be discarded or composted. The DYSKINESIAA studio sources these collected sheds and gives them a second life as wearable objects, with traceability documentation for each batch.

This approach matters because the alternative, exotic leathers from killed animals, is not acceptable in the studio's framework. The work is interested in the language of skin, the geometry of scales, the way a body has marked its own boundary. Killing an animal to obtain that material would betray the meaning of the gesture. A shed skin, by contrast, carries the information without the violence. The animal is alive somewhere, having moved on into a new skin, while a fragment of its previous boundary becomes a fragment of someone else's adornment.

How it is preserved in transparent resin

Once a shed skin enters the studio, it is cleaned, flattened, and trimmed into segments suitable for the design at hand. The skin is fragile in this state, paper thin, prone to cracking, vulnerable to moisture and light. To make it wearable, it has to be embedded in a stable medium that protects the structure indefinitely without obscuring the visual information.

The studio uses a transparent two part epoxy resin selected specifically for clarity, UV resistance, and minimal shrinkage during cure. The skin is placed in a custom shaped mould, often designed in 3D modeling software to fit the silver component it will be paired with. The resin is then poured slowly to avoid trapping air bubbles, allowed to settle, and left to cure for a defined period at controlled temperature. The result is a clear panel or volume with the snakeskin suspended inside it, visible from every angle, locked in place permanently.

The cured resin is harder than fingernail and softer than glass. It can be sanded, polished, drilled, and bonded to silver components using specific adhesives or mechanical fittings. The visual effect is a kind of fossilization. The snakeskin appears as if it has been preserved in amber, frozen at the moment the animal walked away from it.

Why this matters for the Skin Collection

The Skin Collection is built around the idea that the boundary of the body is the most interesting territory in jewelry. The scales of a snake, the texture of a vegetable tanned leather strap, the wrinkled surface of cast silver that mimics human dermis, all of these are different translations of the same underlying interest. A piece in this collection is, conceptually, a fragment of skin transferred from one body to another.

The transparent resin component does specific work in this conceptual frame. It allows the wearer to see the skin without the skin being directly exposed to the elements. It introduces a small distance, a layer of clarity, between the original biological surface and the body that now carries it. This distance is honest. It declares that the skin is not the wearer's own. It is borrowed, embedded, displayed.

The resin also operates visually as a counterweight to the silver. Where silver is opaque, dense, and reflective, the resin is transparent, light, and refractive. The two materials in the same piece create a tension that neither could produce alone. The eye moves between them, registering different qualities of presence in the same object.

How the texture wears on the body

A piece with embedded snakeskin in resin behaves differently from a piece in pure silver. The resin component is lighter, which changes the weight distribution. The surface of the resin warms quickly to body temperature, which changes the tactile experience against skin. The visual quality of the snakeskin shifts depending on the lighting environment, becoming more or less prominent as the wearer moves through different rooms.

Over time, the resin can develop very fine surface scratches from contact with clothing, surfaces, and incidental impacts. These scratches do not affect the embedded skin underneath, which remains protected. The exterior surface can be lightly polished if the wearer prefers a glossier finish, or left to develop a softer matte texture through use. Both finishes are valid and the studio takes no position on which is preferable.

The snakeskin itself, locked inside the cured resin, does not degrade, fade, or decompose under normal wear conditions. The colour pattern that was present on the day of casting will be present decades later, provided the piece is not subjected to extreme heat or aggressive chemical exposure. This longevity is one of the reasons the resin embedding method was chosen over alternatives such as surface lamination or open mounting.

The Molt Cuff and Molt Cig Holder as examples

Two pieces in the current catalogue make the snakeskin in resin technique most explicit. The Molt Cuff is a wrist piece in which a curved panel of snakeskin embedded resin is fitted into a sterling silver frame. The cuff opens via a hinge mechanism, allowing the wearer to pass it over the wrist without struggle. The resin panel sits flat against the back of the wrist, the most visible position when the hand is at rest, and the snakeskin pattern reads clearly under most lighting conditions.

The Molt Cig Holder takes the same material logic and applies it to a different object. A small cylindrical resin volume, holding a fragment of snakeskin, is fitted to a silver clip designed to hold a cigarette. The piece references both the bodily ritual of smoking and the bodily process of shedding. The cigarette, a transient object, is held by a permanent fragment of an animal that no longer needs the skin it left behind.

Both pieces demonstrate the principle that drives the Skin Collection. The body produces material as it moves through time. That material can be honored, preserved, and worn, without harming the body that produced it. The snakeskin embedded in resin is the most literal expression of this principle in the studio's current vocabulary. Other ring forms in the same vocabulary, including the Scaled Finger, push the same logic across the architecture of the hand.

To see the Molt Cuff, the Molt Cig Holder, and the rest of the Skin Collection, the catalogue is at /collections/all-pieces. Each piece carries the trace of an animal that walked away.