Discover the cool and offbeat jewellery of Georgia Kemball

‘I’ve always been drawn to folk dressing, and the myths and fairytales that go with it – I think I’ve always lived a bit in that world,’ says jeweller Georgia Kemball. Based in South East London, Kemball started her eponymous brand in 2017 and is self-taught, having studied illustration and textiles before finding her way to jewellery by chance through a project at university. Her pieces are intricate and intriguing – perhaps featuring a tangle of tiny figures or delicately looped florals – and mostly hand-carved from wax. ‘I feel like I have two ways of making stuff,’ she says. ‘Sometimes I have a real image in my head and I make it. Or I play around and it comes from the material.’

Georgia Kemball

Georgia Kemball - Women’s Sycamore Seed Earrings - (sterling Silver)

Kemball describes subconsciously gathering disparate references that somehow all inform her designs. For a new collection recently launched in Dover Street Market, she can pinpoint some particularly informative discoveries: ‘I've looked a lot at Robert Mapplethorpe's jewellery,’ she explains. ‘He made jewellery in a way that feels very un-self-conscious or contrived. It's a collection of beautiful things that feels effortless.That's what I'm striving to do with my work.’

Far away from 1970s New York, she has also looked to ‘misericords’ – 14th-century depictions of dream-like and devilish scenes which were carved underneath church pews in Europe. Sometimes inspiration strikes closer to home, as a recent upside-down rabbit charm proves: its shape was based on an antique tin jelly mould long used by Kemball’s mother.

The details on her pieces invite closer looks, and Kemball thinks they are best seen in person – which is possible at Dover Street Market London, New York and LA, and by appointment at her studio. There is intimacy to jewellery – in the stories behind certain pieces, and the way they are worn so close to the skin – and Kemball is well aware of this. ‘I'm always noticing the jewellery that people wear. Collections of things on a chain or rings,’ she says. ‘It often means so much, doesn't it? It’s powerful stuff, and it feels amazing that people come to me wanting to mark a moment or buy something for themselves. That feels like an honour.’

georgiakemball.com

Belle Hutton is an arts, culture and fashion writer based in London. Previously the assistant digital editor of AnOther Magazine, she has contributed to titles including i-D, as well as interviewing an array of cultural luminaries, including Nadia Lee Cohen, Jamie Hawkesworth, Vanessa Beecroft, Chitose Abe and Grace Wales Bonner, among others.