CINTA Collection
The LeeLoobird CINTA Collection is a small family of four pieces ~ necklace, bracelet, earrings, and ring ~ each carrying the small heart symbol at her center. CINTA is the Bahasa Indonesia word for love. Each piece is worked in 22k gold vermeil (3 microns over recycled sterling silver 925) or in full sterling silver 925. The Necklace and Bracelet carry a raw Aquamarine stone alongside the heart ~ the small blue water at the source. Blessed in our Bali atelier. A small daily reminder of love that does not need words.
A woman does not need to be reminded of what love is. She has known it since she was very small. What she sometimes needs, in the middle of a difficult season, is a small worn reminder that love does not require a specific vocabulary. It does not require a name. It does not require an argument. Love, in its truest form, arrives before language ~ and returns to a place under language, where the woman is simply held.
This is the entire premise of our CINTA Collection. A small family of four pieces ~ necklace, bracelet, earrings, and ring ~ each carrying at her center the small open silhouette of a heart. The heart shape is universal. It requires no translation, no explanation, no defence. A woman in Jakarta and a woman in Marseille and a woman in Buenos Aires all recognise the same small figure. She is the most immediately-legible piece of visual vocabulary in the human world. She is love, said without a word.
Her name is Indonesian. Cinta is the Bahasa Indonesia word for love, and it is the small daily word every Indonesian mother says to her small child before school, every Indonesian lover writes on the small note she leaves on the pillow, every Indonesian friend calls out from a passing scooter. The word is short. Two syllables. Un-heavy. In the linguistic landscape of Indonesia, cinta is love in the way merci is thank you in France ~ a small daily household word, said many times, softening the ordinary hours.
Sandrine, our founder, is French. But LeeLoobird was born in Bali, and Sandrine chose the Indonesian word for love rather than the French one for a specific reason. She wanted the collection to carry the language of the island where the pieces are made ~ where her wearers, whether they are from Bali or from anywhere else in the world, come into small daily contact with the culture that has been holding this brand since her beginning. Cinta is a small offering to the island. A small gesture of respect. A small acknowledgement that this brand belongs, in part, to Indonesia.
The CINTA Collection is available in both 22k gold vermeil (a serious 3-micron plating over solid recycled sterling silver 925) and in full sterling silver 925. The Necklace and the Bracelet carry a small raw Aquamarine stone at the center, framed with delicate white topaz ~ the small blue water at the source of the word love. Aquamarine is not accidental. Her name comes from the Latin aqua marina ~ sea water. She is the stone of the returning source, the water a woman goes back to when she needs to remember what love feels like when it is not being negotiated.
SANDRINE'S OWN WORDS
☆ THE SPARK WITHIN ☆ Symbols hold immense power, and few are as universal as the heart. The CINTA creations — meaning love in Bahasa Indonesia — are a timeless memento, guiding you back to the pure source where everything aligns without the need for words of ego. It's a reminder of the simplicity of beauty of love in its truest form. Live in light and let this meaningful piece be a part of your journey.
— Sandrine, LeeLoobird
Sandrine names three things it is worth understanding one at a time.
The first is that the heart is one of the most universal symbols on record. Not the anatomical heart. The stylised heart ~ the two arcs meeting at the top, the single point at the bottom ~ appears on cave walls, on ancient Egyptian amulets, on medieval Catholic reliquaries, on Balinese temple offerings, on Aztec codex illustrations, on modern text messages between grandmothers and their grandchildren. She is possibly the most widely-shared visual grammar in the human archive. To wear her at the ear or the wrist or the throat is to wear a piece of a vocabulary that reaches across every century, every language, every religion, every household.
The second is that the CINTA Collection is a timeless memento ~ a small physical object designed to bring the wearer back to a specific interior place. Memento comes from the Latin meminisse ~ to remember. A memento is not a decoration; she is a small object whose entire purpose is to remind the wearer of something she is at risk of forgetting. What the CINTA is designed to remind her of is what Sandrine calls the pure source ~ the place inside her where love is not being weighed, measured, or defended. The place love was always coming from before the world taught her to complicate it.
The third is the small phrase that names the whole practice: without the need for words of ego. Every relationship that stays alive for long enough eventually reaches the place where the two people involved discover that most of the arguments they were having were not, in fact, about the thing they were arguing about. They were about smaller ego injuries dressed up in bigger language. Sandrine is naming that CINTA lives underneath all of this. Under the words. Under the arguments. Under the ego. In the small quiet place where the woman and the person she loves are both, simply, held.
RUMI ~ THE LANGUAGE UNDER LANGUAGE
The greatest poet of love in the mystical Persian tradition is Rumi ~ Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, born in 1207 in what is now Afghanistan, later teaching in the city of Konya in central Anatolia, where his tomb still stands today. Rumi wrote roughly seventy thousand lines of poetry, most of them on the single subject of love ~ divine love, romantic love, the love that runs underneath all other loves. And Rumi understood, more clearly than almost any other poet in world literature, that real love does not use language the way ordinary conversation uses language. Real love arrives at a level where words become slightly unnecessary.
His most-quoted small verse on the subject is this one:
There is a voice that doesn't use words. Listen.
— Rumi
Eight small words, and in them the whole instruction the CINTA Collection is designed to hold at the wearer's body. There is a voice that doesn't use words ~ love speaks in a register underneath vocabulary. She arrives before the sentence. She continues after the sentence. She is the low continuous frequency the wearer is quietly held inside, whether or not she is currently listening. Listen ~ small instruction, gently issued. The listening does not require special training. It requires only the small pause. Slow down. Turn the small worn heart toward the light. Feel the specific small warmth of the metal against the specific small area of the skin. Listen. Something is already speaking. It has been speaking the whole time.
Rumi wrote another line, more famous, that names the same idea from a different angle:
You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.
— Rumi
The insight is this: the wearer's own small heart is not a small isolated fragment of a larger love. She is the whole of love, arriving inside one small woman. The CINTA Collection is a wearable small reminder of this reversal. The small heart at the wearer's throat, wrist, ear, or hand is not a picture of some love happening elsewhere. She is a small piece of the whole love, held quietly against the skin of the person who already contains it entirely.
BELL HOOKS ~ LOVE IS A VERB, NOT A NOUN
Eight centuries after Rumi, on the other side of the world, an American writer named bell hooks published a small book called All About Love: New Visions, in the year 2000. She spent her whole career thinking about the same question Rumi had spent his life on: what is love actually, once we strip away the sentimental packaging? Her answer, delivered in one simple sentence that has since travelled through millions of women's phone screens, is this:
Love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust. Love is an act of will — namely, both an intention and an action. Love is as love does.
— bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions (2000)
What bell hooks is naming is that love is not a feeling that happens to the wearer. Love is something the wearer does. A verb, not a noun. An action, not an accident. Care, extended. Commitment, chosen. Knowledge, sought. Responsibility, taken. Respect, offered. Trust, built. Every one of these is a small daily practice, done quietly, in the ordinary hours, without needing to be announced.
The CINTA Collection is designed to sit against exactly this daily practice. She is not a reminder of the feeling of love. She is a reminder of the doing of love. Each time the wearer catches sight of the small heart at her ear or wrist or hand, she is being asked, gently: how are you loving today? Not who. Not how much. How. The small daily verb, kept alive in the small daily ordinary moments.
bell hooks also wrote something that matters to the CINTA wearer specifically:
Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.
— bell hooks, All About Love (2000)
This is why the CINTA is a Collection rather than a solo piece. She is designed to be layered ~ heart at the ear plus heart at the throat plus heart at the wrist ~ a small worn architecture of the fact that the wearer is not healing alone. She is held. She has been held for a long time. She is being held right now.
BHAKTI + KAWITAN ~ DEVOTION AND THE ANCESTRAL SOURCE
In the Balinese Hindu tradition our atelier sits inside, there are two specific words for what the CINTA Collection is designed to hold. Naming them both matters, because they hold two different dimensions of Sandrine's phrase back to the pure source.
The first word is bhakti, which is Sanskrit-derived and travels through both Balinese Hindu practice and modern Bahasa Indonesia. Bhakti is often translated as devotion, but the English word is too narrow. In the Balinese reading, bhakti is the loving orientation of the whole self toward what is sacred ~ not only formal worship, but the small daily quality of moving through one's real life with the whole heart turned toward the source of things. A Balinese woman preparing rice for her family is doing bhakti. A Balinese woman placing a small offering at the temple is doing bhakti. A Balinese woman running her hand along her small child's cheek before school is doing bhakti. The action is small; the quality of attention behind the action is the sacred part.
This is what CINTA is designed to prompt in the wearer. Not a large heroic love. The small daily bhakti of moving through her real life with her whole heart oriented toward what she actually cares about. The small worn heart at her ear or wrist becomes the small daily reminder to keep the orientation open, especially in the moments when the day is trying to close it.
The second word is kawitan, and she is more specific to Balinese Hindu practice. Kawitan is the ancestral source ~ the small temple, sometimes hundreds of years old, sometimes in a village a woman has not visited in a decade, that holds the founding lineage of her family. Every Balinese person has a kawitan. When major life events happen ~ a wedding, a birth, a death, a difficult season ~ she returns to her kawitan. Not necessarily physically. But spiritually and emotionally. She goes back to where her family began. She reconnects with the small original source of her identity. And she comes back into her ordinary life with a small clearer sense of who she has always been.
Sandrine's phrase back to the pure source is, in the Balinese reading, an act of kawitan. The wearer of the CINTA Collection is being invited to make a small daily return ~ not to a physical temple, but to the small interior source-place where her love began, where it still lives, where she can find it again when the noise of the world has confused her. The small heart at the ear or wrist is the small worn door. She opens easily. She has been there the whole time.
THE AQUAMARINE STONE ~ BLUE WATER AT THE SOURCE
The Necklace and the Bracelet in the CINTA Collection each carry a small raw Aquamarine stone alongside the small heart. This is worth understanding on her own terms, because the stone is not decorative. She is a specific chosen element in the collection's architecture.
Aquamarine is a variety of beryl, coloured a soft translucent blue by trace amounts of iron inside the crystal. Her name is Latin: aqua marina ~ sea water. The Romans believed she was fragments of the mantle of the sea goddess, washed onto the beach after storms. Sailors carried her as talismans for safe passage across water. Medieval Europeans set her into small pendants worn against the throat of women preparing to give birth ~ she was the stone of the returning source, the place a woman goes back to when she needs to remember what love feels like when it is not being negotiated. Blue like the deepest still water. Blue like the space just before daybreak.
In older stone-reading traditions, Aquamarine is the stone of clear communication and pure emotion ~ the meeting of the heart and the throat, of what the wearer feels and what she is able to say. This is exactly the meeting Sandrine names in her product copy: the pure source where everything aligns without the need for words of ego. Aquamarine holds the wearer in the small place where feeling and truth arrive together, without the interference of self-defence.
The Aquamarine used in the CINTA Necklace and Bracelet is worked raw ~ she is not cut into a formal faceted shape but set as a small irregular natural piece of stone, holding her original crystal edges. This is intentional. Love in its truest form is not tidy. It has edges. It has raw places. It does not always arrive polished. The raw Aquamarine on the CINTA is the small honest reminder of this. Love is not a stone that has been perfected. She is the source-stone, arrived in her original shape, held at the wearer's throat or wrist.
THE FOUR PIECES ~ NECKLACE, BRACELET, EARRINGS, RING
Each piece in the CINTA Collection carries the small heart at her center, but the position on the body changes what the heart does. Worn at the throat, wrist, ear, or hand, the small heart becomes a different small daily reminder depending on where the wearer catches sight of her own.
CINTA Necklace ~ The CINTA Necklace is the hero of the collection ~ a slim chain (39 cm with 8 cm of adjustable rings, extending to 47 cm) holding a small open heart pendant, a raw Aquamarine drop pendant just below the heart, and a small horizontal gold vermeil bar set with white topaz along the chain. Rp 3,550,000. Available in 22k gold vermeil (3 microns over recycled sterling silver 925) and in sterling silver 925. The three-element pendant reads as a small worn story from left to right along the chain ~ the bar (the horizon), the heart (the source), the Aquamarine (the water). She is the piece worn closest to the heart, and she carries the fullest architecture of the collection.
CINTA Bracelet ~ The CINTA Bracelet is a slim 22k gold vermeil chain (16 cm with 2 cm of adjustable extension) with a small open heart at the center. Inside the heart sits a small round Aquamarine (or blue topaz) stone, and a small dangling white topaz drop hangs at the end of the chain near the clasp. Rp 2,890,000. The bracelet is intentionally small ~ she is the daily reminder at the pulse point, the place where the wearer's own heartbeat meets the small worn heart of the bracelet. Layers beautifully with our other slim bracelets.
CINTA Earrings ~ The CINTA Earrings are the smallest and most daily piece in the collection ~ tiny open heart studs in either 22k gold vermeil or full sterling silver 925. Rp 1,290,000. She is the small piece the wearer can put in her ears and simply forget about, until at the end of a long day she catches sight of the small worn heart in the mirror and remembers what she has been carrying quietly the whole time. Popular as a small first gift for a friend, a daughter, or a niece.
CINTA Ring ~ The CINTA Ring is a small hammered band with a small open heart at the face. Available in 22k gold vermeil and in sterling silver 925. Sizes 6-8. Rp 1,450,000. The heart on the ring is scaled to sit gracefully on the finger ~ present but not shouting. This is the piece the wearer will see the most often, because the finger is the most-glanced-at surface of the body. Every time the wearer reaches for her cup, her phone, her partner's hand, the small heart is there. A small daily prompt to keep loving.
HOW THE COLLECTION IS WORN
The CINTA Collection is designed to layer, and there is no wrong combination. A few small suggestions from our atelier.
The small daily kit. The CINTA Earrings alone, worn every day, become the smallest possible entry to the collection. She is small enough for daily wear at work, at the school pickup, at the studio, at a small dinner. The most-chosen starting point for our new CINTA wearers.
The self-love pairing. The CINTA Ring worn on the wearer's own dominant hand, unaccompanied by any partner-gift, is a small quiet piece of self-love architecture. She is the small daily reminder that the love the wearer needs to remember first is her own love for her own life. A favourite between women who buy the CINTA for themselves.
The vertical layering. The CINTA Necklace with the CINTA Earrings form a small vertical line of hearts down the front of the wearer's body ~ at the ears, at the throat, echoing each other. This is our most-photographed pairing, particularly in white or cream clothing where the gold reads especially warm.
The full four-piece. All four pieces worn together give the wearer a small worn heart at each of the four positions ~ ear, throat, wrist, hand. Reads as a considered ceremonial set for a wedding day, a milestone birthday, or the small everyday morning a woman wants to acknowledge every kind of love in her life at once.
CINTA layers beautifully with our MERCI Collection (love + gratitude, two small daily practices worn together), with our Oui À La Vie Collection (love + the yes to life), and with our Within Me Ring (love + the inward practice). All of these pairings are correct. CINTA is designed to be part of the wearer's small daily grammar of the practices that keep her true life alive.
CARE ~ KEEPING THE CINTA AT HER BEST
The CINTA Collection is designed for real daily wear. The 22k gold vermeil is a serious professional 3-micron plating over solid recycled sterling silver 925, protected with a nano coating. The sterling silver 925 variants develop a natural patina over time that many wearers come to love ~ she emphasises the small heart's outline. A soft polishing cloth returns her to brightness if a brighter finish is preferred.
A few small notes to keep the collection at her best. Remove pieces before showering, before entering the sea, and before applying perfumes or heavy body oils ~ the chemistry of chlorine, salt water, and concentrated fragrance is not friendly to vermeil pieces or delicate stone settings over time. The raw Aquamarine on the Necklace and Bracelet is durable (7.5 on the Mohs scale) but does not enjoy sharp knocks against harder surfaces ~ store the pieces in soft pouches, ideally lying flat.
Each CINTA piece arrives in our small LeeLoobird pouch, ready to be worn or ready to be given. Because the CINTA is the collection of love, she is one of our most-gifted collections. A small handwritten note tucked inside the pouch always makes the gift complete. The receiver will not need the collection explained. She will already know.
[ IMAGE: Care detail ~ CINTA pieces arranged on natural linen beside a small glass of water and morning light ]
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What is the CINTA Collection?
The CINTA Collection is a family of four pieces ~ CINTA Necklace, CINTA Bracelet, CINTA Earrings, and CINTA Ring ~ each carrying at her center the small open silhouette of a heart. CINTA is the Bahasa Indonesia word for love. The Necklace and Bracelet also carry a small raw Aquamarine stone (with white topaz) alongside the heart. Made in 22k gold vermeil (3 microns over recycled sterling silver 925) or in full sterling silver 925, and blessed in our Bali atelier.
Why is she called CINTA?
Cinta is the Bahasa Indonesia word for love. Sandrine, our founder, is French by birth, but LeeLoobird was born in Bali. She chose the Indonesian word for love rather than the French one as a small gesture of respect to the culture that has held our atelier since the beginning. Cinta is a small daily household word in Indonesia ~ said many times, softening the ordinary hours.
What does the raw Aquamarine stone symbolize?
Aquamarine takes her name from the Latin aqua marina ~ 'sea water.' She is the stone of the returning source, the pure blue water a woman goes back to when she needs to remember what love feels like when it is not being negotiated. In older stone-reading traditions, Aquamarine is the stone of clear communication and pure emotion ~ the meeting of the heart and the throat, of what the wearer feels and what she is able to say. She is worked raw in the CINTA (uncut, natural edges) because love in her truest form is not tidy.
Can I mix gold and silver pieces from the collection?
Yes ~ the collection is designed to mix. Some wearers own the whole collection in gold vermeil for a warmer palette. Some own the whole collection in sterling silver. Some own the Ring in silver and the Necklace in gold. All are correct. The word is the same regardless of the metal ~ the love does not change.
Is the CINTA Collection a good gift?
Yes ~ she is one of our most-gifted collections. Frequently given for Valentine's Day, anniversaries, engagements, weddings, mother's day, and between women in the small circle simply as a small daily reminder of the love that is already there. The CINTA Earrings alone make a beautifully-scaled small gift; the full four-piece is a substantial celebratory set. All arrive in our LeeLoobird pouch, ready to be given with a small handwritten note.
Will the gold vermeil last?
Yes. Our 22k gold vermeil is 3 microns thick and protected with a nano coating ~ significantly more durable than standard fashion jewelry plating. She is designed to hold her warmth through years of daily wear. If the vermeil ever needs reviving after long use, our atelier can restore the plating.
How do I choose between the gold and silver finishes?
A small rule of thumb: choose the finish that already appears most often in the wearer's daily jewelry drawer. If she wears mostly gold pieces, gold vermeil layers into her existing collection seamlessly. If she wears mostly silver, sterling 925 is the cleaner choice. Wearers who mix metals in their daily life can own the collection in whichever finish speaks first.
Do you have solo essays on the CINTA Earrings and CINTA Necklace?
Yes. Each piece in the collection has been the subject of her own longer essay ~ the CINTA Earrings essay traces the heart symbol across cultures (Egyptian ib, Aztec yollotl, Balinese Anahata), and the CINTA Necklace essay unpacks Sandrine's phrase 'the pure source' through Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. The Collection essay you are reading now is designed to sit alongside those solo essays as the small family portrait ~ the four pieces together, layered as one worn architecture of love.
Where can I see the full collection?
You can view the full CINTA Collection at leeloobird.com/collections/necklaces, /rings, and /earrings. Each piece is designed, hand-made, and blessed in our Bali atelier.
The CINTA Collection is not a piece for a woman who is announcing something. She is a piece for a woman who is remembering something. The word is short. Two syllables. Un-heavy. The heart is small. The stone, when present, is raw. There is nothing to explain. The wearer catches sight of the small heart at her ear or wrist or throat or hand, and something small under language turns toward the light. Cinta. Love. Back to the source. The whole practice, carried at the body, in one small daily reminder. Live in light.
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