Wearable Fantasies
Colourful, whimsical, and unexpected – a selection of jewels and gems that bring playful fantasies to lie
How do you create jewellery that’s artistic and whimsical yet wearable? We sought out a few such pieces and talked to the designers responsible for these imaginative masterpieces. Nature, pop art, fairytales, books, and food make up just a few of the influences that inform their neo-whimsical designs, resulting in a playful departure from convention.
Cravings for coffee and pastry sparked high jewellery designer Cora Sheibani’s Copper Mould collection, comprising cake and jelly designs, among others. “People have said that my designs are whimsical or playful, but that was never something that crossed my mind when I created them,” says Sheibani, who came up with the idea while in Switzerland at the workshop at one of her goldsmiths.
Packing a punch, her fluorescent Glow collection unveiled last summer, at the Louisa Guinness Gallery in New York, feature stones that have an “incredible and unusual property of glowing in a different colour, while exposed to ultra violet (UV) lighting.” Fluorescent diamonds deck up a billowing cloud in a brooch, fluorescent zircon and kunzite make for great butterfly earrings, as pink spinel sprinkles glow on a large cupcake ring and rubies decorate a carved ebony Gugelhupf ring.
Taffin
Taffin’s James de Givenchy is always looking for new mediums to work with and new ways to create outside of the expected. An early adopter of ceramics, he employs coloured ceramics – now a signature material – in his artistry. “I was drawn to its wide colour range and the ability to work with it in a sculptural way, creating colourful volumes to play with the individuality of the stones.”
New spectacular jewels in his repertoire include a ring resembling an halved egg, with a luscious orange sapphire nestling in a white ceramic, while hand-sculpted ear pendants in gold, encircled by multi-coloured ceramic, reference a spinning top.
Whimsical mushrooms, candies, ceramic fruits and yummy frozen yoghurt pop up in Suzanne Syz’a contemporary universe. Genevabased Syz (who lived in New York City in the early 80’s and met through her friend, Bruno Bischofberger, Andy Warhol, Jean-michel Basquiat, and many other artists from the pop art scene) marries her strong sense of colour with varied materials like aluminum, titanium, silver, ceramic, and gold in her unique pieces.
The new offerings are broad, spanning from the Pop Art series brooches to Comics earrings with words that spell out ‘Damn/glam, Sexy/bad, Fuck/ Drama’ – and tricked out in aluminum, gold, diamonds, and enamel.