Carry a fork on your wrist or a knife on your neck? The idea seems crazy…Unless this cutlery becomes, under Olivia’s expert hand, precious jewelry. Recycling based on old silverware is what this Rouen designer offers.
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She has a nice fork touch! Olivia Lapourée won the young creators trophy in 2020 and since then, her career as an artisan has taken off. The young woman has her workshop in the city center of Rouen, and sells her creations in different boutiques in the city.
Every day, she sets the table in her workshop called “Vol’ut by Olivia” : forks, knives, spoons in silver or silver-plated metal constitute the basis of his jewelry.
Olivia buys her silverware at flea markets or antique dealers
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© France 3 Normandy
All ornaments are designed and transformed in this workshop. The cutlery that adorned the tables of our ancestors is transformed into necklaces, rings, earrings or pendants.
These unique pieces, most often found in antique dealers, are full of the history of their owners. The young designer offers them a second life. She specifies: “ I didn’t invent anything! In the 50s, fork jewelry was very fashionable! “
There are very few in France who have brought the table up to date.
” We all have different techniques, some use silverware to create animals with forks and knives, I’m really focused on jewelry and its finishes.
Olivia Lapourée transforms French silverware into original jewelry
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© France 3 Normandy
The bubbly young woman of 33 felt the desire to create these jewels while she was a circus artist in a troupe in Morocco. ” The circus was great, but once the show was over, I needed to occupy my hands, touch the material and produce objects that remained.”
She explains that she naturally turned to French silverware, because she comes from a family of antique dealers.” I tried to bend forks from my mother’s stock, then I trained with a jeweler in Paris and another in Lille who passed on his knowledge to me.”
“This jewelry brings back memories, it speaks to people! Customers no longer use their silverware so they entrust it to me(…) It’s recycling because old cutlery, no one wants to use it anymore. C It is a form of revaluation of an object which was fashionable at the time and which is no longer fashionable at all.“. Olivia performs a metamorphosis on these cutlery which sometimes dates from the 1800s or 1900s and adapts to demand:” I like it when there are a lot of patterns, I have a preference for baroque and art nouveau but customers ask for more jewelry from art deco cutlery, it’s more refined, so I buy some too “.
Her jewelry is sold for between 20 and 140 euros on Christmas markets, medieval markets, but also in several boutiques in Rouen and on her website Vol’ut by Olivia.
