The call of Nature
Nature and jewellery have been linked since necklaces were fashioned from snail shells 100,000 years ago. Sarah Royce-greensill explains how our landscape shapes designs
Jewellery inspired by landscape, by Sarah Royce-greensill
From the bird and beetle motifs of ancient Egypt to Grecian gold olive wreaths, the natural world has provided inspiration for jewellers for centuries. Bond Street’s prestigious jewellery houses still demonstrate how flora and fauna dominate in design, whether it’s Cartier’s panthers, Bulgari’s serpents, Van Cleef & Arpels’s butterflies, Dior’s lucky roses, Chanel’s camellia or Chaumet’s hortensia.
There’s a pleasing circularity to Natureinspired jewels, fashioned as they are from precious metal and gemstones, materials that themselves come from the earth. Although sun-soaked beaches and dramatic vistas play out in exotically vibrant jewels, many British designers seek inspiration from lands closer to home. ‘There’s an ever-changing element to the British landscape—one moment it might be bathed in sunlight and the next it might be hailing,’ points out rebecca Hawkins, head of design at Boodles. ‘The artist Paul Nash was renowned for capturing the changing nature of the landscape in different conditions and that’s why I’m interested in his work.’
Indeed, Nash is only one of the British artists whose work miss Hawkins has reinterpreted in jewel form for Boodles’s The Poetry of Landscape collection. His 1929 painting Wood on the Downs—which depicts a cluster of trees atop rolling Dorset hills— is referenced in a suite of the same name, the slender tree trunks picked out in platinum and pavé diamonds, with marquise-cut diamonds in place of their wind-whipped canopies.
‘There’s a certain look about a clump of trees on the horizon,’ notes miss Hawkins. ‘The type of trees, the way they huddle together, the lighting—you know you can only be in Britain. It immediately gives you that sense of home.’ The Tide suite, after a 1920 woodblock by Nash, sees undulating curves
of diamonds across rings, bangles and a dramatic collar, inspired by ‘the repetitive, rhythmic pattern you get as the ocean comes in and leaves ripples on the sand’.
other artists whose work has inspired jewels include Eric ravilious, known for his watercolours of the South Downs, and Gertrude Hermes, whose monochromatic Waterlilies wood engraving is brought to life with pink sapphires and pear-cut pink diamonds. Six suites traverse the British
For Malham Rock, I used heliodor, morganite and aquamarine; they have a calmer, more serene tone
Isles: Malham Rock takes its name from the soaring limestone rock formations of North Yorkshire; Ancient Landscape evokes the chalk figures and standing stone formations seen on the North Wessex Downs. Trewidden, with its delicate pink-diamond and pink-opal flowers, is inspired by the manicured gardens of a Cornish country house. Here, Miss Hawkins was influenced by a photograph she’d taken years before, of fresh camellia flowers that had fallen into a tin smelting pot, with the vast sky and tree branches reflected in the surface of the water.
Many of her designs begin with quick snapshots such as these and Miss Hawkins pays close attention to the exact hues of the gemstones in order to best capture the British aesthetic. ‘We don’t get that brilliant-blue sky and tropical colours, so I looked for stones that are washed out and more muted,’ she says. ‘For Malham Rock, I used heliodor, morganite and aquamarine—there’s a calmer, more serene tone to them that’s beautiful in its own right.’ However, there are also vibrant peridots, set in yellow gold in the Spring Green suite, and lush green, glossy tourmalines, suspended from stylised pine cones in the Woodland suite, a nod to changing landscapes throughout the seasons.
Nature has always been a thread that runs through Boodles jewellery and Miss Hawkins has expanded The Poetry of Landscape collection with six more suites this summer, taking in the clear chalkstreams of southern England, the mountain peaks of Snowdonia and the North York Moors as seen through the architectural ruins of Rievaulx Abbey.
Ruins played a key role in the development of British landscape art in the late 18th century, with William Gilpin declaring that they add ‘consequence’ in his theory of what makes a scene Picturesque. Before this time, landscapes were considered unimportant—even distasteful—aspects of a painting, but Gilpin, together with fellow British artists Gainsborough, Turner and Constable, turned simple pastoral scenes into valued works of art. The latter’s legacy lives on in Essex and Suffolk—known as ‘Constable Country’. Although Constable was comfortable in the green and pleasant lands of East Anglia, he found the Lake District’s bleak mountains ‘oppressive’, according to his biographer Charles Leslie, with whom he toured the area in 1806, yet others find ideas in those soaring peaks. ‘Walking in the Lake District is always inspirational for me,’ says jeweller Barbara Tipple, whose Landscape cuff was inspired by a walk up Scafell Pike. ‘The colours, especially in spring and autumn, are perfect for the stones I like to use—bronze and gold with peridot and pale sapphire for spring, then Mali garnet or coloured diamonds for autumn. I’ve also made versions with colour-change garnets, which are purple in artificial light, then turn green and brown in daylight. For me, they represent the effect of the seasons on a landscape.’
‘Nature is always the most inspiring, but so difficult to replicate faithfully,’ agrees Solange Azagury-partridge, who is based in Paddington, London W2, but always finds time to escape to her bolthole, a restored 19thcentury coach house in Somerset. ‘A country walk is simultaneously invigorating, refreshing and meditative—a great head emptier. It allows room for ideas to flow in.’
And flow they do. Mrs Azagury-partridge’s green-enamel Blade suite of jewellery came about after she idly wrapped a blade of grass around her finger and an amethyst and purple-sapphire cocktail ring from her recent Supernature collection was inspired by the lavender growing in her garden. ‘I’m drawn to the colours, smells and sounds, the apparent simplicity that belies their complicated hidden nature,’ she eulogises.
From 18th-century artists to the most daring of contemporary jewellers, Britain’s beautiful simplicity has been a source of fascination and inspiration for generations —and will be for many more to come.