Spring Product Launch: Kōwhai earrings

We’re wildly excited about our newest earrings! We love our feather series, but birds need a food source so we’re delighted to launch our new kōwhai earrings! The bright yellow flowers are loved by NZers and the way they burst into life heralds the arrival of spring and the lightness of our steps.

The flowers of the kōwhai are an important spring source of nectar for tūī, korimako, kākā and kererū while insect-eating birds come later in the year to feed on the caterpillars of the kowhai moth. Kōwhai trees growing in your garden are not only beautiful, but will feed the birds!

As one of our few native trees that are deciduous, at the end of winter Kōwhai seem to burst into life overnight. Legend says that on arrival in Aotearoa a young tohunga from the Te Arawa waka sat with a girl under the bare branches of a Kōwhai tree in the month of August. He asked her to marry him and she replied that she will only marry him if he can perform some brilliant act. “I will cause this tree to spring instantly into flower before your eyes.” He used all his powers and the tree bursts into bloom, his final touch causing a ring of yellow blossoms to appear around the dark hair of the girl. Ever since, say Te Arawa, the Kōwhai has flowered on bare and leafless branches.

These kōwhai earrings are laser cut from ice cream container lids and plastic bottles. This is the first of our products to use PET bottles!

The plastic used for bottles is easily recycled, but this provides manufactures an escape clause - they can keep using single-use packaging while claiming that it will be recycled. But in reality, only 8% of recyclable plastic is actually recycled and plastic bottles are one of the top two most damaging ocean pollutants.  

Reuse, not recycling, is the answer and our Kōwhai earrings challenge you to switch to reusables whenever you can. Like Kōwhai flowers you can burst into spring with a positive climate action, making small changes for big environmental change! 

Brighten your day and lighten your footsteps with these 100% recycled earrings! $2 from every pair sold is donated to Trees that Count to support the planting of New Zealand natives. 

The pieces have embossed markings and pictures from the ice cream container lids - we celebrate the character and origin story that these provide and hope you do.