when jewelry designers draw their inspiration from living things

Under the bronze patina, the wood is there, with all its veins, its accidents and its twists. Made up of fragments of driftwood connected by a brass arc, the sculptural pendant created by Delphine Nardin surprises with its lightness. “I wanted to preserve the life of these pieces of tree washed up by the water, to create an assemblage that one could believe to be spontaneous. I never retouch the shapes: I select, I cut, I apply a bronze patina, which somehow ennobles the wood and creates a play of contrast. explains the jewelry designer between the windows of the Parisian gallery Naïla de Monbrison, where she recently exhibited her unique pieces. On the velvet of the displays, a necklace made of driftwood branches held by silver nails, a ring fixing shell imprints in solid silver, earrings enclosing pink shards with a line of gold or frosted glass blues… Delphine Nardin says to herself “in love” frosted glass, these shards stirred by the waves and the salt that she has gleaned since childhood on the beaches of the Atlantic coast. “This very beautiful material, diaphanous and soft like a grain of skin, does not interest many people but for me has a great intangible value. Like all elements collected in nature, they are vestiges, the memory of the living, says the trained geologist and archaeologist.

» Discover the entirety of F, Art of Living

ADAPT TO ORGANIC FORMS

Like Delphine Nardin, nature is the muse of a growing number of jewelry designers. They draw their inspiration there, nourish their style there, and harvest their raw materials there. Spontaneous forms become unique works. Neglected materials rise to the rank of precious materials. “Why do you need diamonds when you have pebbles?», laughs Nathalie Mathoulin, French based in London. It is on beaches and in English gardens, as well as during her travels, that she finds her raw materials: rounded pebbles, eroded shells, fine pebbles… which she sets with 18-carat fair trade gold. “I don’t polish anything, because the finish of a natural stone is extraordinary in itself. And I choose the setting according to the singularity of the pieces: a stone is wrapped in gold ribbons, a shell surrounded by a fine mesh…”, explains the woman who was a shoe designer for fashion designer Paul Smith for ten years.

Same approach at Marianne Anselin, who sublimates things picked up : wood, leaves but also bolts, nails and cogs because iron is a native metal that returns to its natural state by rusting . In her Parisian workshop, where she installed a forge, this sensitive designer likes blurring the boundaries, no longer really knowing what was manufactured and what is natural : titanium necklaces look like petrified twigs, branches of Japanese cherry trees become rings encrusted with diamonds, leaves collected under the cabin trees of childhood twist into bronze gangues…

Also read
The most beautiful back-to-school jewelry

AUTUMN SETTINGS

As if to freeze the ephemeral, jewelry also seeks to reproduce the minutiae of nature. To transcribe, line for line, the veins of a leaf or the reliefs of a bark. Like at Sophie Bouilhet-Dumas, founder of Mira Stella, where orchard seeds and hydrangea petals picked in her Normandy garden become very delicate bracelets, pendants or earrings in 18-carat pink gold. Another universe, but same precision at Samuel François, Parisian creator loving the “plant thing”, where nature is dressed in a baroque aesthetic: “It all started with grapes: I started to wax-cast grains that were lying around on my table, then flowers, seeds, cherries, strawberries… I like this cornucopia side where nature rubs shoulders with more opulent elements”, comments the man who is also the historic fashion editor-in-chief of the magazine Number. Among his latest pieces: a cluster brooch where gilded bronze and brass intertwine with Murano glass beads.

Same attention to detail and play with the painter Maïlys Seydoux-Dumas, whose artistic jewelry is inspired by organic elements to better divert them: from a long apple peel passed around the neck was born the idea of a first collection called Pomona, the goddess of the orchard. His latest series“dream objects” (an articulated necklace, a brooch, a pendant), was suggested to him by an autumn walk on Boulevard Arago in Paris: “All these chestnut leaves on the ground reminded me of the necklaces that, as children, we tried to hold together with stems. I wanted to make it look like the leaves had just fallen from the tree and been picked up.” Pierced by golden branches, the long patinated silver leaves of the necklace seem to have been assembled by the wind.