This piece is part of the Royal College of Art Visiting Artists Collection. Every year from 1987 to 2006, while David Watkins was Professor of Goldsmithing, Silversmithing, Metalwork and Jewellery at the RCA, he invited four jewellers and silversmiths from outside Britain to give a week-long masterclass. The artists brought diverse skills, aesthetics and approaches. The first call on their time was to interact closely with the students. In addition, although concentrating on their teaching and working in an unfamiliar studio, each artist generously made an object for the RCA's collection. The Royal College of Art Visiting Artists Collection, now transferred to the V&A, is a major document of international contemporary jewellery, a tribute both to the artists and to the vibrancy of the RCA as a teaching institution.

Organic materials, derived from animal or plant sources, often have a very low intrinsic value, but many have been used in jewellery since ancient times.

The artist jeweller Kadri Mälk often uses ebonized wood as a material. In these forms she may include precious metals and gemstones, or even fragments of 'found objects'. Her pieces often have complex narratives with autobiographical references taken from experience and memory. The fur, for example, is from a coat that her grandmother had during the War.

Mälk studied at the Estonian Academy of Arts, and pursued further studies in gemmology at the Lahti Design Institute in Finland before completing her training in the lapidary studio of Bernd Munsteiner in Germany. Since 1989 she has been a professor in the jewellery department of the Estonian Academy of Arts.