Current Project
LEAVING HERD — 2025
Initiated in autumn 2024, Leaving Herd is a creative dialogue between jewelry artist Erik Merisalu and artist Léopold Brekke. Born from Léopold’s desire to collaborate across artistic disciplines, this project intertwines historical research with material exploration, transforming cultural narratives into wearable art.
This series of Bolo Ties finds its foundation in Leopold’s fascination for Osselets. Today known as a vintage schoolyard game, composed of five bone-like pieces of wood, metal or plastic, osselet’s have been found in most cultures around the world. Considered as the forerunner of dice, osselets played a key role in Ancient Rome and especially Etruscians culture. Many of them have been found in Etruscan tombs as tokens of chance and also in Central Asia, where they carry a deep cultural and divinatory role. Leaving Herd explores themes of chance, playfulness, and becomes a medium for storytelling, bridging the spiritual significance of an ancient object with the tactile art forms of silversmith. Reinterpreting the iconic Native-American bolo tie, allowed blending Léopold’s textile background with Erik’s expertise in metalwork.
Through a limited series of handcrafted silver and bronze jewelry, the artists explored the transformation of symbols—how objects once charged with spiritual and social meaning continue to evolve as carriers of personal and collective identity.
LEAVING HERD — 2025
Initiated in autumn 2024, Leaving Herd is a creative dialogue between jewelry artist Erik Merisalu and artist Léopold Brekke. Born from Léopold’s desire to collaborate across artistic disciplines, this project intertwines historical research with material exploration, transforming cultural narratives into wearable art.
This series of Bolo Ties finds its foundation in Leopold’s fascination for Osselets. Today known as a vintage schoolyard game, composed of five bone-like pieces of wood, metal or plastic, osselet’s have been found in most cultures around the world. Considered as the forerunner of dice, osselets played a key role in Ancient Rome and especially Etruscians culture. Many of them have been found in Etruscan tombs as tokens of chance and also in Central Asia, where they carry a deep cultural and divinatory role. Leaving Herd explores themes of chance, playfulness, and becomes a medium for storytelling, bridging the spiritual significance of an ancient object with the tactile art forms of silversmith. Reinterpreting the iconic Native-American bolo tie, allowed blending Léopold’s textile background with Erik’s expertise in metalwork.
Through a limited series of handcrafted silver and bronze jewelry, the artists explored the transformation of symbols—how objects once charged with spiritual and social meaning continue to evolve as carriers of personal and collective identity.
