CHERISHING
IVY RUTH DAKIS
09;11;2011 - 08.09.2025
At its heart, this practice exists to support people through the creation of objects and rituals that feel personal, considered, and true to their own experience of grief.
Each piece begins with conversation, not with a fixed idea of what mourning should look like, but with the understanding that every loss, every relationship, and every way of honouring is different. A Sacred Mourning is a space where people can arrive gently, without needing to have all the answers, and feel supported in shaping something meaningful from what they are carrying.
While mourning jewellery and memento mori have roots in historical and religious traditions, A Sacred Mourning is intended as a space for all people, regardless of faith, background, spirituality, or personal practice. The act of creating is shaped around what feels meaningful for each person’s experience of loss, whether that meaning is held through religion, cultural practice, symbolism, personal ritual, or a quieter sense of love and remembrance.
Grief does not unfold in clean stages, but settles into us over time, shifting between heaviness and acceptance, presence and absence, the immediate and the remembered. It becomes part of the everyday rather than something separate from it, and it is within this space that ritual, in whatever form feels true to the individual, can become essential.
Ritual does not need to be elaborate to matter. A Sacred Mourning exists within that understanding, offering physical forms of honouring. Whether through sacred imagery worked into a bespoke design, ashes or hair held within a created stone, or scent and flame used to mark a moment of reflection, each offering is intended to help give form to what is being carried. These are not grand gestures, but small anchors, made with care and intention, allowing grief to become something we can hold differently over time.
grief does not leave,
and it is not meant to,
but through ritual, through faith, through personal meaning, and through the act of honouring, it can be given form, creating space for those we have lost to remain part of our lives in ways that are tangible, present, and enduring.
Philosophy
My path back to the bench has not been linear, but it has been shaped by a lifetime of making, observing, designing, documenting, and trying to understand how people hold meaning in the world around them.
I previously worked for eight years under the Brent Dakis Jewellery label, following earlier creative work through Limerence Boutique, before stepping away from jewellery for what became a ten-year absence.
In the years between, my practice moved through graphic design, branding, photography, videography, editorial writing, communications, and community projects, each of them adding another layer to how I understand story, symbolism, material, atmosphere, and the emotional weight that objects and images can carry.
A Sacred Mourning was born from the sudden and unimaginable passing of my 13-year-old daughter, Ivy, a moment that did not simply alter my direction in life, but brought about a reckoning that redefined it entirely. In the months that followed, I found myself navigating the duality of hopelessness and an overwhelming need to help others find their way, a tension that began to translate itself into action through both A Sacred Mourning and the development of The Forge Institute.
Returning to jewellery through A Sacred Mourning has not felt like simply resuming an old craft, but like arriving at a point where many parts of my life have converged. My experience as a jeweller, designer, photographer, writer, creative director, and community organiser now sits alongside my lived experience of grief, and my recent certification in grief coaching, forming a practice that is both practical and deeply personal.
I do not see this work as only the making of jewellery, but as the facilitation of a process, one where grief, memory, faith, symbolism, material, and personal story can be gathered and given form. My role is to listen, guide, design, and create with care, helping each piece become something that feels true to the person being honoured, and to the person who will carry it forward.
About Brent
“A Sacred Mourning is not just a business, but a response to loss, shaped by experience, memory, and the need to give form to something that so often exists without structure or language.”