Inside the sculptural and sensual philosophy of jewellery house Renisis

‘I think it’s a challenge to be truly novel in today’s society. To be truly unique is something I strive to do,’ shares Sardwell, the South African born, now US based founder and creative director of jewellery house Renisis. Sardwell, who creates pieces that become ‘your daily armour,’ has a body of work which includes sculptures, installations and theatre set designs. For her, jewellery is a means of metamorphosis, one that we have full agency in, with pieces chosen not only for their intrinsic beauty, value and design ingenuity, but for their ability to transmute our interiority.

Sardwell’s jewellery practice was not immediate. She studied sculpture at Rhode Island School of Design, and she still sees herself principally as an artist, with jewellery ‘a current expression of creativity’. However, there is a clear narrative thread that led her to her present juncture: ‘I was creating these large installations, and later started traveling and lacked space to do that. As a result, all my ideas about sculpture became smaller. They became sculptural objects, and then there was functionality thinking, and so they became jewellery.’

The jewels that Sardwell has become well known for are sculptural in form, and as compelling as still-life objects as much as they are when worn on the body. Her noted Curl Collection contains many visual and textural surprises. Everyday elegance is catered for in the Dream Loop earrings, while an edgier counterpoint is seen in the pearl and pave diamond set Curl ear cuff and arresting cocktail rings set in numerous gemstone iterations, or with coloured semi-precious stones. She fell in love with the latter during her time in Brazil and Argentina working in theatre. ‘I would go to markets and see tables filled with minerals and crystals and what is commonly theirs – amethysts and tourmalines and all the quartzes,’ she reminisces. Such memories are captured in her Bullet Rings that balance these natural treasures in delicately carved gold forms.

Cultural distillation and proposing new ways of spiritual and metaphysical connection underpin Sardwell’s process, one that she candidly shares is difficult. Indeed, Renisis as a name is a portmanteau of the Latin word ‘renitor’ meaning to struggle against and ‘genesis’ with its implicit meaning of beginnings. ‘I feel creativity is a struggle,’ she states, adding ‘to be in the right mental state, away from all of the demands of your daily life is one element of struggle and the other element of struggle is the actual process of not having self-doubt and to allow ideas to flow unhindered.’

Travel has been an integral part of Sardwell developing her own distinct design language, as too has her interdisciplinary creative path. She spent six years in Shanghai and traveling across China and Japan, which allowed her to observe an alternative aesthetic palette and absorb a different making methodology. Reminiscing about this pivotal time, she adds ‘looking at temples, at roofs that are curved and coming to points in unusual ways or the simple idea of a water drain cover on the ground that in Tokyo that is so beautifully designed with cherry blossoms I have since incorporated into my work.’

These ideas are further expressed in the Evidence of the Future collection, where from nomenclature to design Sardwell fuses notions of sacred spaces and architecture working in tandem to inform internal and external equilibrium. With the Guardian Temple Pendant, the back features carved patterns inspired by Japanese Shibori fabric from the Edo period that were worn as an undergarment. The Halo Lotus Double Ring is an invitation to meditate, with a South Sea pearl as central stone and the yellow shoulders set in pave diamonds and the Halo Wish arrow studs featuring inverted diamonds are a sartorial nod to Sardwell opting for novel ways to present the familiar.

In many ways Renisis can be viewed as both a jewellery house and a laboratory for Sardwell’s creative practice. It has provided ways of articulating a visual vocabulary that allows wearers in the words of the house’s strapline to ‘empower, transform and transcend’, yet is deeply informed by the founders myriad of experiences. For Sardwell, jewellery is ‘something that really incorporates and synthesizes elements of conceptual ideas and art that I really love such as performance, costume, theatre and sculpture.’ Thus, the pieces possess a dual role: adding to the stories we tell ourselves and assisting in the stories we tell others, when we decide to adorn ourselves.

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