Zelle jewelry and accessories celebrate the inherent beauty of technology and make it a fashionable accessory. Geeks and fashionistas alike will appreciate the sophisticated, elegant and restrained designs.
Liz McLean Knight was hunched over her soldering iron blissfully imagining the crazy sounds she would unleash at the show at which she was scheduled to perform in just a few short weeks. She picked up a little plastic sequencer toy from Radio Shack earlier in the day called “The DJ Challenge” and was attempting to circuit-bend its output into something completely sonically innovative. After frying its single teeny speaker in an unfortunate experiment, she abandoned the project in a mess of electronic guts on her apartment’s dining room table while she devised an alternate plan. Weeks went by and Liz eventually found more satisfaction composing electronic music through virtual instruments on her laptop than through manipulating the ohms of resistors. On her way out the door to the aforementioned show, she picked up a few choice electronic bits, quickly twisted them together, and made a necklace. After the show she was greeted not only with commendations on her music, but on her new jewelry. A few people asked her to make more necklaces, and maybe some matching bracelets….and Zelle was born.
Since 2003 Zelle has expanded and improved upon its line of minimal yet elegant designs, appealing to those who desire expression for their inner geek, as well as design enthusiasts and the fashion-obsessed. With distinctive packaging for every piece, it’s not only visually appealing in a store, but a joy to receive as a gift. Each item is handcrafted by skilled independent artisans with both attention to detail and durability in construction.
Liz McLean Knight (Lead Designer)
Liz started college by majoring in computer science and ended it by studying conceptual art at California Institute of the Arts (Valencia, CA, USA), eventually combining the two disciplines into her own jewelry and accessories line. She also runs the Chicago experimental electronic music magazine, Modsquare, creates electronic music under the Quantazelle moniker, DJs as Liz Revision, runs the subVariant record label and manages the Fractalspin geek-chic webstore. She can speak French (moderately) and PHP (well), likes relational databases, the quicksort algorithm, glitchy electronic music (like Aphex Twin, Lusine, Apparat, Akufen, the Yellowtail, Perlon, Sender, & Trapez labels, etc), Max/MSP, Traktor Scratch Pro, Ableton Live, Native Instruments VSTs, Italian greyhounds, vegetarian Thai food, clothes in black or gray (Diesel or Kitchen Orange preferably), binary watches, Game Boy and c64 emulators for the PC, Rez for Dreamcast & the Tony Hawk series for PS3, and blissfully falling off her IRL skateboard (Element). She lives in Chicago.
Q: Why don’t you use sterling silver findings or pretty crystal beads along with resistors and capacitors?
A: Because that would totally defeat the idea behind the jewelry–electronic technology as an object of beauty in itself. Using materials that have traditionally been viewed as valuable or “fine” such as silver or gemstones would contradict the idea that the preciousness of the components and what they represent takes center stage (besides, silver clashes with components–non-silver complements it much better :-)).