Whispers of the past_
Earring archive
Mafalda Ribeiro
As exercise 2 of the Project curricular unit, during the second semester, we were asked to create an editorial artifact. As the original brief stated, this was an open assignment, with no restrictions on theme, size, materials (…), these details being left to each student’s choice.
My individual response is a book that behaves as a visual archive of images, all of which portray one object in common: earrings. In developing the project, my aim was to trace the history of human vanity over thousands of years through a universally recognizable object whose formal expression captures, in its essence, the mindset of humanity at the time it was made.
This book brings together hundreds of images of original earrings from Asia, Africa and Europe, categorized into three periods: Antiquity, the Medieval Period and Modernity. The text appears as an accessory to the images, offering information about them and giving them additional context.
Imprint / Technical Rider:
Year: 2024
Dimensions: 210 × 142 × 5 mm; 272 pages
Materials: Canson Sketch (fine grain, 90 g/m²).
Production and finishing: Swiss binding, softcover.
Resources and credits: Content taken from the websites of several museums around the world (listed in the book’s colophon); digital photomontages in Procreate; image editing and cutouts in Photoshop 2020; layout in InDesign 2020.
Curricular Unit:
Project (1st year)
Supervising Professor:
Eduardo Aires