The inspiration behind cult jewelry brand Completedworks’ chic ceramics
As NET-A-PORTER expands its Lifestyle offering, ANNA JEWSBURY, artistic director of ceramic and jewelry brand Completedworks, talks to KATIE BERRINGTON about expressing yourself through interiors and the art that inspired her latest collection of vases
For Completedworks artistic director Anna Jewsbury, inspiration can strike anywhere. Her main sources include nature, architecture, travel and fine art, so it’s lucky that “there are so many opportunities to interact with those different touch points living in London,” she tells me, particularly with a studio situated next to Regent’s Park.
The brand’s last few collections have been “focused on the communicative potential of everyday objects and how you can use jewelry and ceramics to convey ideas”. The Fold ceramic series, now available on NET-A-PORTER, was developed in collaboration with visual artist Ekaterina Bazhenova-Yamasaki.
“We were looking at the way draperies have been used by painters over the centuries and how the details – you know, a little neat fold or a careless fold in portraits – might say something about the painter’s mood or a particular historical moment in art,” says Jewsbury. The result is a conceptual and textured array of asymmetric, sculptural pieces. Handcrafted from glazed ceramic, contours and creases represent the movement depicted on the canvas.
There are many ways that the art and process of designing jewelry and ceramics complement each other, Jewsbury says, but there are also differences. She uses the analogy of it being “a little bit like a pianist wanting to pick up a violin; the same kind of end goal but different hand movements in the crafting of the work.”
“It’s so refreshing, in a way, having worked with jewelry for several years, to have this opportunity to work with a new material now,” she says. “What’s nice about clay in the way that we’ve worked with it, which is in a very hand-building way, is that you get that physical satisfaction of squeezing and kneading and rolling. Jewelry-making has its own satisfaction, but there’s something very tangible and almost therapeutic about this.” It might be why Jewsbury is so delighted that her two-year-old son has got into playing with modeling clay during lockdown. “It’s the same kind of satisfying!” she laughs.
The designer’s own esthetic taste can be quite contradictory, she says. Both her house and studio are Georgian buildings, with intricate, traditional Georgian features, so she prefers the décor to not be “overpowering”. On the contrary, she is also a fan of Japanese modern architecture, like concrete spaces. Living with a toddler, though, means “my mood board often looks very different to my reality!”
One of the impacts of movement, travel and contact being restricted this year is how valuable our personal space has become. “It’s a good time to invest in really special pieces that will become permanent features in your life and bring you joy, something you have a personal connection with and speaks to you,” Jewsbury considers. This is what she hopes the ceramics will spark in their owners, as a “form of self-expression for them”.
“I have them in my house, just sitting on my shelves with books. They can look as interesting without flowers as they do with them
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“For me, it’s all about the beauty of an individual piece and then how you arrange those objects and how that helps you to express something – similar to jewelry, similar to clothes.”
The ceramics, like the brand’s jewelry, are “classic pieces taken a little bit left of center, reinvented with small deliberate details [to create] a juxtaposition,” she says. “With the vases, I think there’s a lot of opportunities to work with them, because they’re quite simple but detailed at the same time,” she continues. “Some have quite a small neck and they are angled unconventionally, [so] there are a lot of ways to play with the pieces.”
Taking a leaf out of Bazhenova-Yamasaki’s book, Jewsbury has got into foraging for wild flowers with her son and then creating arrangements with them. But the vases, conceptual and expressive of their own accord, are a piece of art in themselves. “I have them in my house, just sitting on my shelves with books,” she shares. “They can look as interesting without flowers as they do with them.”
Looking to the future, sustainability is of great importance to Completedworks; earlier this year, the brand reached the point whereby all its jewelry is now being made from recycled materials. But Jewsbury is already looking to the next changes. “We are always trying to make small improvements and consider our impacts,” she says. “We know it’s not an end goal; it’s a case of incorporating sustainability into the culture of the company and everything we do.”
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The person featured in this story is not associated with NET-A-PORTER and does not endorse it or the products shown