hungry like the wolf; A New York jewelry designer heeds the call of the wild.(Ryan Kearney )(Brief article)

Byline: Jane Herman

Almost on a whim, photographer and designer Ryan Kearney launched into jewelry-making after a ring he received as a gift started getting massive amounts of attention. It was an ordinary gold costume piece, shaped like a carousel horse's head, complete with the wavy, human-like hair and jeweled bit--tacky on the verge of fabulous. "Everyone was loving it," says Kearney, "women and men both. So I thought, Why not do

my own take on a big animal ring, switch it up a little, make it minimal?"

Two years later, Kearney has a zoo of beasts and their good eats. There are predators: grizzly bears, lions, and owls, to start, rendered large as keenly detailed rings, each with bottomless black-diamond eyes. And all have their respective prey-trout for the bear, a field mouse for the owl, an acorn for the squirrel, a fly

for the bullfrog, and so on-done as pendants that dangle from long chains, as if to tempt their enemies. "They're more delicate than the rings, and feminine," says ...