DANIELA VILLEGAS
Los Angeles-based Mexican designer Daniela Villegas uses an artist’s eye and exceptional skill to create painterly jewels that have a distinct, provocative eccentricity. “I like to see my work as art. Jewellery is just a vehicle or medium to express my ideas or concepts,” she says.
Nature is Daniela’s inspiration, and she uses a wonderful array of gemstones and fine settings to bring her quirky animal themes alive, often fearlessly combining precious materials with natural objects, such as insects, shells, feathers, and porcupine quills.
One of her recent show-stoppers is the Athena necklace, featuring an oversized boulder opal, mimicking the luminescent body of a beetle delicately contrasted with a single wing of micro-pave emeralds, Tsavorite garnets, and blue sapphires. Similarly, in the El Portero necklace, a patterned translucent cowrie shell is contrasted with spinels, garnets, cat’s eye alexandrite, and South Sea pearls to create a whimsical octopus goalkeeper that ‘caught’ a pearl ‘ball’.
A prolific designer, Daniela says she wants to continue to “create, create and create, telling different stories inspired by different themes”.
For more information, visit www.danielavillegas.com.