The jewellery designers turning their hand to homeware

In Milan’s elegant modernist Villa Borsani this April, popular London jewellery brand Completedworks revealed its first-ever furniture collection, as part of the annual Alcova exhibition. Comprising a table, console, stool, chair and footstool with bronze and silver finishes, the pieces are refined and precious-looking, yet simultaneously playful and unusual, reflecting the brand’s jewellery.

Three designers transition from jewellery to furniture

From ornamentation of the body to ornamentation of our living spaces, young jewellery brands like Completedworks have increasingly expanded their offerings to include homeware and furniture. LA-based J. Hannah has released a series of lamps since 2023 while Mexico City-based jewellery maker Alana Burns started applying her craft to homewares such as candle holders and cutlery in 2022. The rest of the design world is embracing the crossover: this spring, Paris-based collectible design gallery Galerie Anne-Sophie Duval opened ‘Jewelry Objects’, inviting jewellery designer Sophie Buhai to exhibit a series of accessories and homeware objects amongst its Art Deco furniture.

Completedworks, established in 2013 and run by creative director Anna Jewsbury, tested the waters of homeware in 2017, when it collaborated with multidisciplinary artist Ekaterina Bazhenova Yamasaki on a line of ceramic vases. Since then, Jewsbury and her team have designed drinkware, tableware, vessels and more – in glass, metal and ceramic – all with a sculptural sensibility.

Then, Completedworks took the plunge into furniture. ‘I renovated my house in 2021,’ says Jewsbury, ‘and through that, had loads of leftover materials I started experimenting with to make new things.’ What began as ‘big sculpture’ emerged as more functional pieces. ‘We often talk as a studio about the juxtaposition of femininity and ornateness with the practical and the everyday,’ she says. ‘There's something really nice about exploring furniture in that context.’

What jewellery and furniture share, she adds, is that they’re ‘an expression of the wearer or the owner.’ The brand also applied material approaches from its jewellery to the new furniture. ‘The bronze pieces were modelled in fabric then cast in bronze using the lost wax casting method, which is the same way we make jewellery,’ she says.

Like Jewsbury, Jess Hannah Révész, the 34-year-old designer behind her eponymous J. Hannah brand, has been making jewellery since 2013. Driven by an appreciation for what she refers to as ‘tiny intricate little sculptures’ and a passion to create – she learned metalsmithing through YouTube tutorials, lessons taught in someone’s garage and an apprenticeship – Révész now makes ‘classic’ and ‘vintage-inspired’ jewellery, using recycled precious metals and diamonds alongside ethically sourced gemstones.

Expanding into lamps was somewhat of an accident. ‘I had an idea for something I wanted in my house, made it, posted it on Instagram, and then other people wanted it,’ she recounts. What started as one cuboid polished aluminium lamp, designed by Révész and fabricated by a local lighting and welding firm, turned into a series of four modernist-inspired lights – with shades made from framed ribbed glass, Japanese mulberry paper and box-pleated linen.

Révész describes the lamps as ‘objects for the home through a jewellery designer’s lens’, and the clean lines, elegant chunkiness and quality materiality speak to a shared language with her rings, necklaces and other pieces. Révész is interested in designing more homeware, but insists any new designs have to ‘make sense’ for the brand. ‘If you make too many different things it gets a bit complicated,’ she says.

When Alana Burns began to design jewellery in 2019, she was simply crafting pieces for herself, focused on the use of shells she had collected over time. ‘Those early creations were intimate and personal,’ she recalls. But the project grew and by 2020, she was creating – and selling – an evolving collection of jewellery. ‘As I continued, I found myself increasingly drawn to the sculptural nature of these tiny works,’ she says. ‘Even in their smallness, I could see the outlines of something much larger.’

Her jewellery pieces expanded into shell-adorned candle holders, lights and cutlery. 'I started thinking beyond the body and towards space – towards objects that held presence and form in a different way,’ she says. Though continuing to make jewellery, Burns is perhaps now better known for her delightful and attractive objects for the home – sold by The Future Perfect, Lamb Gallery and others.

Playing with decoration and function, these designers use jewellery and homeware as vehicles to express what really drives their creativity. ‘At the core of everything I create is a desire to transform the meaning, concept or function of a thing – how to reimagine what it is, or what it was, into something entirely new,’ Burns says. ‘It’s this play with meaning and material that continues to inspire me, whether the piece is worn, used or simply witnessed.’