Dzonu

dzonu noun (ʣo-nu (Ewe)| \ʤǝʊ-nu: (IPA)\|jo-nu)
1. (dzo) jo: ‘fire’/ jo-nu: ‘of fire’ (in the Ewe language)
2. ashino noun (a-shi-nɔ (Ga)| \æ-ʃi:-nɒ (IPA))
1. ‘beads’ (in the Ga language)

What is your colour? How are you feeling? Who are your kin? What is the occasion? What will you trade me? Are we lovers?
Friends?
Family?
These are a fraction of the insights that dzonu reveal. But we promise. There is a fitting bead to answer each question and so many more.
Dzonu are fundamentally of ancient forging magic. They quite literally embody the aspect of fire that is pure potentiality: the potential to mean any and everything mirrored by the potential to translate into endless materials, from bone to glass, and at Emefa Cole, gemstone. Here, dzonu are fashioned into silhouettes of metamorphosis steeped in the transcendental chemistry of Earth’s transfiguring power–transcending generations, transcending materials, transcending the limits of meaning.
As a daughter of the Ga, Ewe and Ga-Dangbe people, Emefa lives both this meaning and this magic in her blood; so much more than jewellery: they are music, they are hierarchy, they are royalty, they are rank, they are currency, they are prophecy, they are wealth, they are love and spirituality, and life and death itself. They are a child’s welcome and first jewellery, the herald of new a marriage, the bud and bloom of new life in the family. Every potential occasion and milestone that occurs in a person’s life has a corresponding dzonu, and inheritance makes it so that an individual’s jewellery collection is simply a single weft in a lengthy family tapestry of dzonu.
Whether you are purchasing for a partner, gifting a friend, or treating yourself, engage with a cherished hallmark of West-African culture. Ignite a tapestry of fire for you and yours with ethically sourced, finely handcrafted strings of dzonu, singularly constructed with precious stones begotten of the Earth.