A Tradition of Journeys - 35 Years of Exquisite Craftsmanship

35 years of Exquisite Design & Craftsmanship

A Tradition of Journeys Part 1 35 Years of Exquisite Design & Craftsmanship ‘Do not follow where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path, and make a trail’ For 35 years, Cassandra has made her own unique trail as a jeweller, gemologist, and restless adventurer. Her collections have been inspired by countless travels around the world. Her workshops blend lost art techniques with the latest materials and her designs combine her deep love of traditions with a contemporary freshness and wit that is distinctly her own. Her bespoke ‘transformations’ breathe new and playful life into treasured heirlooms.

From her newly refurbished shop on Sloane Street, she is the jeweller of choice for countesses and princesses; entrepreneurs and artists; women who appreciate the meaning of something, not just surface beauty. Her iconic designs are instantly recognisable and her influence on the next generation of designers and jewellers grows stronger every year.

For Cassandra, the beauty of a jewel is far more than its exterior and she believes in creating pieces designed to be handed down to the next generation. Modern day heirlooms which go beyond the realms of fast fashion and which are created by smaller teams of people with environmental impact and sustainability at the forefront of their minds. Since the beginning, every stone has been personally and ethically sourced by Cassandra.

Cassandra’s designs are inspired by the many colourful countries she has visited around the globe. To celebrate her 35th anniversary, Cassandra is delving deep into her jewellery archives to re-discover her most celebrated designs and re-creating each one either in its original form or reimagined into an unseen version. The collection marks a milestone which will be celebrated in a special edition book late in 2020, with photographs from her journeys. It will showcase the 35 th anniversary collection of 35 jewels and Cassandra’s innovative jewellery design and exemplary British craftsmanship to date.

35 years of adventures and inspirations, collections and transformations is the perfect time for Cassandra to pause. To take a moment to reflect on what she’s achieved and share the story of her incredible journey. A defining moment as a designer, a creative and an avid explorer. And, of course, to ask ‘where next?’

Sustainability The source of all the raw materials of Cassandra's jewels is from nature. From the inner core of the earth come the silver, gold and platinum she works into her designs. And she knows well that the rough crystals that she cuts into gemstones are the incredible combination of earth elements that she used in early chemistry experiments to understand their properties.

Cassandra is passionate about the natural world and its treasures but is also well aware of its fragility; these core values are ever present in all that is done both in her workshop and at her store on Sloane Street. She insists on knowing the source of all her raw materials and recycles metals and gemstones constantly both for her own designs and in the personal bespoke transformations for her clients.

Her thoughtfully researched unique designs from her 'Tradition of Journeys' are a celebration of these wonderful places and the magical elements that combine to create beautiful and wearable jewels. Her designs tell stories to be retold and passed on, and continue to be created with the exquisite craftsmanship from her team who have worked with her for 35 years.

As her old family friend, E F Schumacher said: "small is beautiful".

QUOTE PENDANT Love The Life in Gold

Cassandra’s Early Years The early years of Cassandra’s journeys led to many one off designs and often bespoke projects for clients. Cassandra experimented with colours and textures, facetted and cabochon stones, strings of beads and pearls. She cut through sheets of silver trying out new shapes with this metal which was so easy to turn and bend. She set star rubies into earrings with lightning bolts of gold and melted balls of silver and gold to sit around andalousite baguettes in a pair of earrings.

Her passion for interchangeability was there from the start with her Astrea hoops and their witty and varied pendants. So too with her Theresa studs and the halos that whirl around them, transforming the simple stone set studs into larger and more exotic earrings. She would sell a box of four studs with various halos to start clients off into the magical world of her designs.

Other Iconic designs soon followed - especially her Madrid cross with its pearls and colourful facetted stones and her Alice Alphabet charms. And from Seville, she turned the domes of the Meson del Moro into cufflinks and from endless beaches, Cowrie shells were turned into earrings and pendants. Cassandra's tradition of silhouettes started in these early years too, transforming the very personal black and white silhouettes of children into gold and silver charms for mothers and grandmothers and even into Cufflinks for fathers and grandfathers!

Her Aeneus and Multi Aeneus rings have always charmed with their myriad colours of precious and semi-precious stones and have been a wonderful design for bespoke projects where old, worn out rings and brooches have been transformed into a ring that can be worn every day.

Another early witty design was Sabina – the plain and pave set crescents – linking together diamonds with rubies, emeralds or sapphires. An entire river of them races round a necklace that flips like a leaping salmon to another colour combination on the reverse. Salvavida – her ‘life saver ring’ design created as a necklace was given to Ellen MacArthur when she circumnavigated the globe in 2005.

Opening the First Shop in London

OCTAVIA White Gold Earrings with Chrome Diopside, Opal, Green Tourmaline and Diamonds SABINA White Gold Necklace with Diamonds Reversible to Blue Sapphires and Diamonds

NICOLE Gold Ring with Garnet

MULTI AENEUS Gold Ring set with Tanzanite, Pink Sapphire, Tsavorite Garnet and Mandarin Garnet

SILHOUETTES

MESON DEL MORO

Gold Silhouettes on the Epiphany Bracelet

Pair of Gold Cufflinks

OCTAVIA Astrea Hoops with White Gold Ear Pendants with Green Opal, Green Amber and Diamonds or with Opal, Tanzanite and Diamonds

SALVAVIDA Gold Bracelet with Diamonds. Also in White Gold and as a Necklace

THE FIRST JEWEL First Commission: Gold Interchangeable Earrings with Pearl and Diamonds

China China conjures up thoughts of chinoiserie, butterflies dancing across 18 th century wallpaper, towering pagodas and gardens billowing with peonies. And so it was just this that Cassandra found on her travels in China.

She designed a 'kaleidescope' of butterflies named after the names variously given to its capital city: Peking, Nanjing and Beijing. In plain gold and silver they flirt around necks and wrists. With diamond pave, rubies and sapphires they flit lightly onto ears dangling a trail of diamonds and pearls. And finally landing as the exquisite Beijing butterfly on a jacket lapel or crowning a tiara for a bride on her wedding day.

The great city of Shanghai is defined by its Whangpoo river snaking around its bends. Cassandra's earrings twist around the facetted, briolette and cabochon cut stones, each pair unique in its combination of colours: soft pink kunzite, green tourmalines and golden citrines. The stones unrepeatable.

Fascinated by the Terracotta Warriors at X'ian she looked back to those warring tribes of Qin (221207BC) and Han (206- 220BC) and created her warring coloured Qin & Han rings and earrings: vivid pink tourmaline with fiery orange opals, piercing doubly refractive blue zircons with purple cabochon tanzanites. Even one of a kind, unpaired stones that nature often provides still find their way into these earrings with her mismatched and inverted pairs.

From high up in the Pagodas of Suzhou she spied the exquisite gardens and their lattice windows. The celebration of architectural space and light in these windows led her to create the Star Anise designs of bracelets, necklaces and earrings. And as Cassandra so often likes to quote from Renzo Piano: who once said to the Mayor of Lille, France: 'Le luxe' Monsieur le Maire 'C'est le vide' (Luxury is space.)

But of all Peking’s most enchanting sights, the beauty of the Temple of Heaven is the hardest to describe.

It’s sublime austerity is mocked by words. It is what it is – the most fitting architectural expression of man’s highest aspirations in the world,’ ( John Blofeld.) Her golden earrings echo the geometric shapes on the edges of the temple’s roof: circles, squares and marquises fall in a cascade that tremble from the ears of the wearer.

Inspirations from China would not be complete without reference to the Great Wall. Cassandra’s cufflinks, enamelled in an array of colours, even communist red, seem like a water colour so lightly has she infused their surface with enamel.

NANJING White Gold Earrings with Tahitian and Fresh Water Pearls, Rubies and Diamonds

SHANGHAI Gold Earrings with Aquamarines and Pearls

PEKING White Gold Earrings with Diamonds and Gold Earrings with Blue Sapphires NANJING Gold Bracelets worn together to create a necklace

SHANGHAI White Gold Earrings with Beryl, Blue Topaz, Aquamarine and Diamonds

SHANGHAI Gold Earrings with Pink Kunzite, Green Tourmaline, Citrine and Diamonds

BEIJING BUTTERFLY White Gold Brooches with Emeralds, Rubies and Diamonds STAR ANISE Gold Bracelet with Diamonds

QIN & HAN Gold Earrings with Fire Opal and Pink Tourmaline

QIN & HAN Gold Earrings with Opals and Blue Topaz Gold Earrings with Tanzanite

TEMPLE OF HEAVEN Gold Earrings

GREAT WALL OF CHINA Silver Cufflinks with Blue Enamel

Scandinavia Pine cones and larch cones dangled like temptations from frosty branches, finding their reflection at the water’s edge, before the snowfall. High seas and boats. Knots in ropes. Sails adrift in the wind. Lichen covered forests deep in moss let wild flowers poke their heads through the velvet carpet underfoot, later in autumn the flowers alternated with mushrooms and fallen pine cones appeared again.

Cassandra travelled to Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland in Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. She watched the skating-ice break in Stockholm, picked mushrooms in Denmark, brushed leaves underfoot in the great forests of Norway and in Finland listened to the Orthodox chanting at Valaam.

KIRSIKKA - Meaning Cherries in Finnish Gold Necklace with Tahitian Pearls

CIRKEL Gold Ring with Rare Red Spinels and Diamonds

TABURET White Gold and Yellow Gold Bangles with Diamonds

FURU KONGLE Gold Fir Cone Pendant with Diamonds

Bulgaria The over lapping domes of Alexsander Nevski Cathedral in Sofiya seemed endless. Cassandra watched and admired them as she went in and out of the cathedral while she stayed in Sofiya. In her sketch books the design for a pair of pearl and diamond earrings took shape, a design that has adorned countless brides on their wedding days since then.

It was the beautiful countryside outside Sofiya that leaves lingering memories of Bulgaria.

Rolling hillsides of Bulgarian roses, carpets being made outside in distant villages, and the monastery of Rila, built by St John of Rila or Ivan Rilski lying nestled in a great forest of pine trees south of Sofiya. On that Sunday morning Cassandra stood in silence at what lay before her - black, white and red galleried cloisters built around the central church curving relentlessly around the cobbled courtyard. She designed a brooch that echoes the enveloping branches with pearls and diamonds, and variously with aquamarines and emeralds.

The Apollonia bracelet with its double-sided design and set with carre cut watery blue aquamarines and sapphires, is named after the great Greek city on the Black sea, now known as Sebastopol.

NEVSKI White Gold Pendant with Pearl and Diamonds

APPOLLONIA Gold Necklace with Aquamarines

NEVSKI Gold Earrings with Tahitian Pearls and Diamonds

Japan Cassandra had admired from afar the Japanese elegance and self-control that had created so many exquisite works of art. When in the heart of Toyoko, Cassandra found inspiration in the zig zagging roof tops, the vibrant colours and the hustle and bustle of the Tsukiji fish market. It was the Mon, or family crest, on the back of a kimono during an inner-city wedding that inspired Cassandra’s ‘whorl’ motif jewels and the pastel coloured sugar sweets embossed with patterns of plum blossoms and maple leaves that was the starting point for Cassandra’s Four Seasons.

Watching plum blossom float away in a blush of pink in the Imperial Palace garden lakes, seeing the Chrysanthemums stand proud in their Ikebana floral displays, kicking up the autumnal colours of maple leaves or admiring the bamboo groves tower towards the snow capped peaks are all moments of the four seasons that play out so beautifully in Japan. Cassandra celebrated each one of the seasons with jewels and the Four Seasons stacking rings captures them all together .

The plum blossom resonated with Cassandra as they reminded her of the japonica flowers when she first moved to London. These delicate flowers adorned the sides of the most beautiful bowls in a restaurant in Kamiya becoming a vessel for exquisitely prepared Japanese delicacies. On returning home, Cassandra reflected on the trip and a haiku by a priest: “Regardless of weather; The moon shines the same; It is the drifting clouds That make it seem different On different nights”

OCTAVIA MARGARITA White Gold with Opal and Diamonds

FOUR SEASONS Yellow, Rose and White Gold Stack Ring

OCTAVIA MARGARITA White Gold Earrings with Pale Pink Tourmalines and Diamonds

OCTAVIA MARGARITA White Gold Pendant with Blue Sapphire

Egypt As Cassandra walked through the sunken streets of Cairo, she saw several women with coiled plaited hair; simple, elegant, beautiful and yet as ancient as Cleopatra. It was the starting point for her Egyptian collection.

The regal and bold Ozymandias design with its vibrant trios of facetted stones was inspired by the great poem of Shelley that he wrote soon after part of a statue of King Rameses II (Ozymandias in Greek) was found: ‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings.’

Cassandra’s rings of iolites, amethyst and blue topaz lie set in bold tomb-like settings with a quartet of diamonds and outer bands that echo pillars of the Egyptian temples at Thebes.

Inspired by the Egyptian Queen, Cleopatra, who on her meeting with Anthony, drenched the sails of her barge with rose water and then covered the floors of her palace with rose petals, Cassandra created the Rose designs. Curling petals set with diamonds fold around the central stamens, enchant the wearer and seem to almost leave a lingering scent of roses.

PHAROAH Gold and Silver Bangle

ROSE White Gold Ring with Diamonds

OZYMANDIAS Gold Ring with Peridot, Blue Topaz, Iolite and Diamonds

SAQQARA Pair of Gold Cufflinks with Iolite

Italy Cassandra still remembers her first trip to Italy and the love affair has never warned. From long lunches with her cousin’s uncle, a professor at the Scuola Normale in Pisa, admiring Italy’s exceptional architecture, philosophers, writers and artists to weekends in Rome lusting over the jewels of Castellani and Giuliano.

Unexpected inspiration came in Northern Italy from bundles of tagliatelle pasta. Almost no day goes by without Cassandra eating pasta, so it was no surprise that pasta should be the inspiration for an iconic design for rings and later earrings, bracelets and pendants. From Southern Italy and its Sfogliatelle pastries came the design that she transformed into earrings. At Pompei, she was fascinated by the flow of lava from Vesuvius that destroyed the town, its paintings, mosaics and buildings. The mosaics inspired her Lavinia cross with its micro mosaic pave of coloured stones.

But it was in the forum baths designed by the architect Niremius that she found inspiration for one of her greatest designs: the concentric circles of her Niremius pendant. In celebration of this she has created a spectacular five row version for her 35 th anniversary this year.

Cassandra’s Carrelino pendants were also inspired on her travels in Italy with their bold fearless settings for large emerald cut gemstones – they are full of Italian flair that transcend all styles and eras. On returning to London, filled with thoughts of togas, laurel leaves, Roman soldiers and a perfect pre-lava strewn city, the astrantia flowers of an English garden lured her with their delicate detail and paper-like petals which inspired the design of her earrings of the same name.

ASTRANTIA Gold Single Earrings with Diamonds

TAGLIATELLE White Gold Ring with Diamonds

CARRELINO Gold Pendant with Citrine

LAVINIA White Gold Cross Pendant with Aquamarine, Blue Sapphire and Diamonds.

Gold Cross Pendant with Amethyst, Aquamarine, Red Garnet, Diamonds and Pearls

35 years of Exquisite Design & Craftsmanship Cassandra Goad, 147 Sloane Street, London SW1X 9BZ Telephone: 020 7730 2202 www.cassandragoad.com cassandra@cassandragoad.co.uk