She holds up the second card, which depicts a pink hand being engulfed by a snake as the hand’s five tendril-like wands, for fingers, point skywards. “Wands are about creativity and passion—ideas—but fives… fives are not good cards,” she says. “I know: Everyone only wants good cards….” No, no, I say—I want to hear it all. “…but they’re great tools. The Five of Wands represents a struggle, a creative struggle—or a power struggle, or a power imbalance. You might feel like there’s a snake almost nipping at you, that you’ve lost something creatively and spiritually. Your best way forward is taking the path of least resistance. But it’s OK, because….”
Love holds up the third and final card: A pendant-draped hand pierced by a wand. “This is the Ace of Wands, a lovely card. It’s basically saying you are about to embark on a new incredible creative endeavor that is ripe with opportunities, but you have to let go of what’s happening now.” At this point I tell Love what my question was: What’s going to happen next in my life? “This is where you’re going next,” she says, holding up that third card again. “The Ace of Wands is an insanely good card.”
As to where Love is going next, her Tarot deck The Infinite Door—based, she tells me, on the classic 1909 deck, the Rider-Waite Tarot—is part of a creative resurgence she is feeling, and a move away from branded avarice and corporatized luxe flashiness of our current moment in favor of something that feels more eternal and personal and intimate. It’s perfect for Love, whose jewelry design has long been an act of empathetic expression. “That was always the intention,” she says. “It’s interesting to be creating that kind of work, because with social media there can be a sameness to everything—and we’re not about that. My work—I like to think of it as an embrace.”
What people are drawn to from Pamela Love are pieces that feel commemorative of feeling, with ceremonial importance—pieces like her exquisite fine jewelry engagement and wedding rings, perhaps with brilliant- or marquise-cut diamonds mounted into braided 18k yellow gold bands (her gold is recycled, the diamonds ethically sourced). There are more everyday pieces too, which bear her distinct way with design—her trademark dagger or hand pendants, the palm bearing a heart-shaped ruby—as well as a new addition to her oeuvre, a range of sterling silver pieces, like a chunky hammered ring or the tiny perfume amulet hanging from a silken cord. And while they seem to draw inspiration from ancient forms of adornment, Love’s jewelry very much feels of today.
