Stunning Nacre

For a while now, Greek designer Melanie Georgacopoulos has been busy designing jewelry using mother-of-pearl (MOP), or nacre, produced by mollusks as an inner shell layer and also makes up the outer coating of pearls. “I like to keep challenging myself and surprising my clients, therefore I decided to start working with MOP since it’s the next closest thing to a pearl, yet so different in appearance and the way it is handled.” Her focus has been to create very minimal jewelry in order to highlight the beauty of each color of mother-of-pearl (MOP) and also use the biggest sizes available in each color. It was important for Melanie to strip away any unnecessary elements, keep clean lines and guide the viewers eye to the iridescence of each nacre sheet. “The pearls used are primarily for functional reasons, to keep the piece in place when worn, instead of being the highlight of the piece. For this collection, my main aim was to use jewelry elements – gold, pearls, MOP – but in such a way that the finished piece is not immediately identifiable as jewelry, it sits between jewelry and sculpture, intriguing the viewer as to how it can be worn,” she explains. She sources MOP from far and wide: the white and golden MOP from Australia, where the biggest South Sea pearl production exists, and the darker MOP from Tahiti, where Tahitian pearls abound. Melanie’s first solo exhibition in ten years ‘Nacre,’ held earlier this year at the Karin Wimmer Contemporary Art in Munich, Germany, showcased pieces from each of her five MOP centric collections, while also offering jewelry enthusiasts an insight into the wide and varied world of mother-of-pearl. | melaniegeorgacopoulos.com