THE NEW-COMERS The number of jewellery designers in the world is huge; for whatever reason, more and more people are choosing to express themselves through the art of jewellery making. To pick out just four newcomers to the scene may seem an extremely random affair: so why Rami Abboud, Tomasz Donocik, La Mouche and 10 Royale? Each of them represents a different approach to jewellery design and each is at the beginning of their own adventure. For some, such as LaMouche, this adventure started years ago as a bench jeweller working for other jewellery designers. Tomasz Donocik graduated from college and went straight on to win his first award; he is now slowly building up his first collection. Rami Abboud, the fourth generation of a jewellery family, has two galleries in the Lebanon and his jewels are in several museum collections worldwide. 10 Royale is the joker in the pack – this young and dynamic company commissions designers to work on jewellery collections with them. Its first collection came out in 2012 by Kenzo Takada.
RAMI ABBOUD Born in the Lebanon and brought up in Europe, Rami Abboud has developed a very specific style, which is the sum of not only his worldwide travels but also his architectural and gemmological studies. His undoubted fascination with the sculptural qualities of the human body has led him to create ‘contemporary wearable sculptures’ that mould to the body. The concept behind Abboud’s sculptural jewels becomes obvious with a visit to his conceptual galleries in Beirut. In his workshop he has a series of busts corresponding to a variety of different shoulder and clavicle moulds, and it is on these sculptural representations that Abboud models each of his necklaces so that they sit snuggly on the wearer.
“The well-studied sculptured necklace is created by using a series of links which work on the underside to recreate the shape of the wearer’s bust.”
Composition Ideas come to him in a sequence and he is conscious of “the ever evolving and endless possibilities.” Abboud believes that the state of a piece of jewellery is transitionary, depending on where it is being viewed. So, for example, when a woman’s hand rises to her breast, just for that instant, her ring becomes a brooch, or if she raises her hand to her ear, her ring temporarily becomes an earring. This is an important concept to bear in mind when viewing Abboud’s work; there is a certain continuity between the jewel and the body that is primordial in his work. With respect to his demi-parures, he frequently changes the composition of his earrings so that they create a contrast with the necklace. On other occasions he uses asymmetric earrings, with one side longer than the other, or he will set the earrings with different gemstones on the two sides. The demi-parure only comes together as a coherent whole when the beholder takes in the necklace and the earrings as one.
PREVIOUS PAGE: Perle de Rosée Earrings (10 Royale) – white diamond, white gold LEFT: Stream-line and Eddy Earrings – spinel, ruby, opal matrix, yellow and white diamond, white and yellow gold OPPOSITE PAGE: Stream-line and Eddy Necklace – spinel, ruby, opal matrix, yellow and white diamond, white and yellow gold
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