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Welcome to rachelsays... The blog of Rachel Lewis, containing my thoughts and musings on illustration, design, fashion, music, cakey-bakey goodness, culture and things that I generally find cool. There's also a good chance my own illustration work will pop up on here.

All work on this blog is copyright to me unless I state that it isn't. Obviously. Don't do stealing, kids.

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Friday, April 02, 2010

Inspiration: Hannah Martin, Luxury Jewellery Designer

At a recent Immersion session we had a talk from Hannah Martin, who is a really talented Luxury Jewellery Designer. She works with silver, gold, diamonds, all kinds of expensive stuff, and produces work such as...

All quite expensive. I say quite. You can guess... gold and diamonds ain't cheap. But they are beautiful.


The thing that really struck me about Hannah's work is that each of her collections have a story behind them. Her first collection was called 'It's only Rock N Roll' and was based on the hedonism and raw masculinity that a rock n roll lifestyle produces. It's the perfect collection for aspiring (or real) rockstars, with pure sexual charge and excitement, she describes it as a collection for men that their girlfriends will want to steal. The silver spikey rings above are in that collection, and that first example, I simply love. I dread to think how much, but I would love to own something like that.

She really gets deep into the character and story behind each collection, and the current one is no different: It's called Vincent and is based on the character of an old-school gangster, or maybe a russian mafia type, but is so stylish and slick and cool. She really thinks about her target market with each collection, not only who they are bit who they aspire to be; after all, jewellery like this is such a statement of intent - not only your status but who you want to project yourself to be.

"An oligarch of the underground, a shadowy patriarch of a Russia imbued deep in the flesh of London society, Vincent is Hannah Martin's prevailing infatuation.

In a sinister world powered by the furtive dealings of presumed businessmen, his disquieting charm impeccably masks a cold and brutal core. He moves untouchable, wielding an enigmatic power over those naively daring to cross his path.

Infiltrate an unscrupulous realm of disquiet, to command allegiance amongst the fallen angels of a brutal empire." That's pretty cool. Take a look at the pieces:

Silver cufflinks, £335. Only 500 will ever be made.
Silver ring, £350
Silver necklace,  £995. Only 25 will be made.
£2995. Diamonds, Gold, Hand Cut Onyx. Only 75 will be made.

It's all pretty amazing. She graduated from St Martins and had work experience at Cartier for 4 months, then decided, after no-one would take her on to do what she wanted, she would do it herself. She said at times it had been tough, but it was all worth it, and every year gets easier, every collection gets more press and she's now trying really hard to get her pieces into places she aspires to sell in. She only ever works with people she admires and I think that's an important lesson.

Click here to go to her site, and if you have a few spare K, buy some amazing pieces of hand-crafted art. Then give it to meeeeee. Haha.

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