My new range of silver-enamel retro-modernist earrings, ‘COLOUR ME’, is inspired by the simple beauty and power of colours. Colour changes how we feel and it expresses our mood as a perfume does. It can accentuate our best features – and earrings have always been one of the principal players in how we dress up.
A picture story to show how much fun I have enamelling my charms. Enamelling the old fashioned way, with powdered glass in a red-hot kiln, is a fabulous thing to do. There's a bit of alchemy and a lot of craftsmanship.
There's something about butterflies with their shimmery wings that sets off associations with fantasy and metaphor: ethereal, delicate, powerful, transformed, something of the stuff of magic.
While hiking in a remote ancient Cape forest last weekend. I was wearing my brand new African Elephant charm. When we got to a sparkly stream at the base of a gorge, I felt I should get a photo of my ellie in that extraordinary place. There was once a time when elephants lived in those forests.
As a jeweller I occasionally get offered the pleasure of trawling through peoples treasure boxes with them. They are usually quite a mess (!), tangled chains and earrings, but full of surprises, rich in stories and memories.
Africa is full of messages for us, and these talismans are the best gifts you can possibly give: beautiful, useful, thoughtful, and all in silver to last and treasure for a lifetime.
Ellies have the most fabulous bodies, beautiful bone structures and a strange baggy-pajama type skin covering it all. I made my Elephant a baby elephant because I love the playfulness in their movement!
So many of my charms are about the concept of Spring. Spring is new beginnings, the miracle of new life unfurling from the buds on a bare winter branch. It seems amazing sometimes that such a miracle happens every year!