To choose, Violette Stehli’s office would look more like that of a botanist or a paleontologist than that of a jewelry designer. On his large black table, between two vanities, mingle fish vertebra, Uzbekistan wolf’s tooth, eucalyptus seeds, sea urchin, scorpion…
The jeweler collects all kinds of remains, remains and transforms them into jewelry using the lost wax casting technique. Results ? A coral-shaped ring, an opossum tooth earring, a bat claw necklace, a crow’s paw pendant…
“I like to draw inspiration from things that we are not used to looking at and question the notion of precious. For me, the precious is nature. In a way, I create jewelry like relics of a disappearing nature,” explains the designer, who also draws a parallel with Victorian mourning jewelry or even the burial chambers of pharaohs.
Singular, his pieces, which we imagine straight out of an old chest, are made of silver, vermeil or gold, sometimes encrusted with stones of all colors: garnets, sapphires, tourmalines, quartz with inclusions. Violette Stehli, 2021 finalist of the Hyères Festival fashion accessories competition, does not just imagine jewelry, she makes them herself in her workshop located in the 19th arrondissement of Paris. It can thus honor many special orders.
“When you master all the stages of the creative process, you are freer to achieve exactly what you have in mind”, says the former student of Fine Arts at the University of Sydney, then at the Ecole Boulle in Paris. Passionate about know-how, the designer also likes to explore ancient jewelry techniques, such as those of Etruscan goldsmithing, and “discover other relationships to body ornamentation”.
