Sia Taylor Celebrates 15 Years In Jewelry By Going Back To Her Roots

Inspired by nature, and designed in her Somerset studio, Sia Taylor exports her poetic jewels around the world, and it’s particularly popular in the US. As she celebrates 15 years in business, Taylor reflects on her experiences, the value of slowing down, and why her anniversary collection is a return to the first seed of her success.

Delicate clusters of golden dots and shimmering strings of leaves wing their way from South-Western England to White Bird in Paris and Liberty London, Japanese retailer HP France, or Greenwich St Jewelers in New York City. Made in England by a team of artisan jewelers who solder each tiny dot and gold lozenge by hand, the jewelry is not only an exploration of the forms of nature themselves, but also a way to convey how it makes us feel; joy at a trill of birdsong, wonder at the setting sun, or calm amidst fluttering leaves.

“I think a lot about the story I’m trying to tell,” the designer tells me from her studio. “I don’t consciously have someone in mind when I’m designing, it’s more about a sense of escapism and magic.” Her first collection, created while she was living in Ibiza, was inspired by seeds collected in the forest. The 15-year anniversary collection, A Golden Seed, reconnects with that concept, this time in a meadow setting, as Taylor explores grasses, leaves and flowers using techniques that are new to her practice: “it’s about the sensation of sitting in that meadow, watching, listening and feeling it.”

“Almost everything I make has been melted wire and cut out sheet gold since the beginning. For this collection, I wanted something denser, more three-dimensional – we spent a lot of time figuring that out,” she says. After “a long phase imagining how things might work and sketching,” she creates maquettes in paper and now, one simple addition to her work is folded gold, as well as cast forms: “I haven’t used casting for years as I don’t like the idea of things being repeated,” she tells me. “But I realized we can do both, and after a lot of development, the final collection is a mix of tiny, rounded cast forms, our sheet metal dots and shapes, and gold wire.”

Taylor initially trained in fine art and has a Masters in sculpture, yet was drawn to a tiny scale and learned her craft at evening classes at London’s famous art school, Central Saint Martins. “I’m not classically trained, it’s more about telling stories through jewelry as art, than adornment,” she says. That first collection, designed in Ibiza, was picked up by Dover Street Market on her return to London and things snowballed from there.

Growth since, has been fairly straightforward; after working alone for the first eight years, she took on a bench jeweler and now employs 10. “I’m very cautious, so we never overstretched and grew gradually,” she tells me, before admitted that, as for so many creatives, “for me personally, my biggest challenge has been feeling confident in what I’m making. It’s interesting watching the jewelers who work in the atelier – who all also make in their own right – grappling with the same challenges around prices and selling, especially now so much is sold on consignment.”

For a brand that works mainly in gold, the metal’s ever-rising price is also a challenge. Taylor makes her own alloys and uses different shades of gold like strokes of paint, to represent a Turkish sunrise shimmering over the sea in a pair of earrings made up of tiny gold half-moons, or a rainbow seen through drops of rain, in graduated strips ranging from blush pink to gun-metal gray. “I can’t imagine how I would use gemstones,” she says when I ask whether those raindrops could ever be painted with diamonds; “a gemstone gives a starting point to build around, whereas we create forms from nothing. It’s very important to me that everything is made by hand.”

Each tiny shape is cut using a saw, rather than a laser: “I don’t feel jewelry is something in which we should be saving time. Traditional skills are dying out in all aspects of life, but it’s essential that we keep it going. That hand-brain-object relationship is so important, handmade objects have a presence that machine-made pieces do not.”

Slow craft, and slow living; as this year, Taylor has taken time off of the treadmill of jewelry shows in Europe and the US, to replenish and reconnect with her creativity. “I realised last year that it had all become more about business so I’ve taken time to reshape things into what they were meant to be. After this year, I’m clearer about my direction and able to work on the next set of pieces, which will be more complex.” The new collection launched quietly in London, and paradoxically, she is having her best season ever, reaping what she has sown after a period of rest and refocus.

A Golden Seed is available on Sia Taylor.com, 10% of all profits will go to the Somerset Wildlife Trust