Planet’s fragility inspires blossoming of nature in high jewellery

“What is this life, if full of care, We have no time to stand and stare.” These words by the Welsh poet William Henry Davies come to the jeweller Alex Monroe’s mind as he considers what he hopes to achieve with his new exhibition at the Garden Museum in London. He wants people to stop and stare.

Into the Wild will explore the link between creativity, craft and nature. Monroe hopes it will stimulate visitors’ interest in threatened environments and help people see the value of detailed study of nature — like that by a craftsman — “in a time when we’re destroying our environment” and rushing to the next thing. The exhibition, running from May 1 to June 1, will feature a jeweller’s bench in a forest setting, with its plants, sounds and smells.

Nature has always been a big inspiration for jewellers, but recent high-jewellery launches by large houses point to it being a dominant theme this year.

Dior was inspired by the countryside home of the brand’s founder for its Dior Milly Dentelle collection, unveiled in Paris in January. De Beers’ Essence of Nature collection paid homage to trees, the diamond jeweller making its first use of jet (fossilised wood). Cartier represented fauna, including its signature panther, in Nature Sauvage, while Chaumet celebrated bamboo in a 10-piece capsule.

“We’re in a climate crisis, the planet’s in real trouble and we’re becoming increasingly removed from nature,” says Monroe. “So I guess that people are latching on to that.”

For the exhibition, the London-based designer, who has made nature-inspired jewellery since founding his business in 1986, has created six silver floral sculptures inspired by endangered UK habitats: temperate rainforest, ancient orchard, hedgerow, unimproved grassland, chalk grassland and heathland. He will arrange these pieces, which incorporate jewellery elements, with help from floral designer Hazel Gardiner.

“I’ve always been really obsessed with the Dutch tulip paintings or Spanish still lives where you’re capturing a moment in time, but you’re showing the passage of time and . . . the beauty of the fleetingness of time,” says Monroe. “So the blossoms are on the turn and falling, and things are happening, although it’s a frozen portrait.”

The sculptures will be displayed alongside items demonstrating Monroe’s research, design and making process. A new 20-piece collection, Wild Botany, will be shown along with other natured-inspired designs.

Like Monroe, being amid nature is a source of inspiration and healing for Claire Choisne, creative director of Boucheron. She designed a carrot flower brooch for the French house’s latest high-jewellery collection after seeing the plant in a field south of Paris.

Untamed Nature comprises 28 pieces, including a fly, a moth, reed and oat grass. Choisne took inspiration for the designs from brand founder Frédéric Boucheron’s vision of nature, seen in white diamond archive pieces dated 1878-1906. Instead of depicting floral motifs typically seen in jewellery, she says these mainly portrayed “humble” leaves. His “super-realistic” representations also included insects.

Choisne used these “ingredients” in her contemporary designs but put her own spin on the concept. “It was already untamed, but I tried to push this notion even more by letting the nature take over the body,” she says. “So we played with new ways of wearing the pieces.”

This included showing different designs being worn together, and in untypical places: a fuchsia brooch is styled on the side of a model’s head. “There are no pieces like that in the archives, but it was really a good way to show that nature can take over the body; nature is free,” says Choisne, who will return to the theme for another high-jewellery collection in July. She says “human and nature are too separate” these days, prompting her to blur the boundary.

Anne-Eva Geffroy, design director at Graff, thinks the current prevalence of nature-inspired designs is “linked to the sadness of the world” and a need for happiness, with nature meaning harmony.

Last month, Graff launched five high-jewellery suites to mark the 50th anniversary of Butterfly, its highest-selling fine jewellery collection. A white gold necklace features 23 butterflies, made from 16.35 carats of white diamonds, sitting on 57.13 carats of pavé emeralds. Each insect has two marquise and two pear-shaped diamonds for wings. Geffroy says the design leaves the insects “free to fly”.

She attributes Butterfly’s popularity to its beauty. “When you see in real life a butterfly you always admire the colour or the shape, and you know that it is very fragile at the same time, and delicate,” she says. “Butterflies are something that give you happiness when you see them . . . and you can never be long with them because they fly away.”

Monroe’s exhibition will explore themes such as the impact of nature on mental health, and the degeneration of nature. He says all companies making things are “complicit in destroying nature” but may also make positive contributions. Jewellers, of course, use metals and gemstones extracted from the earth. Monroe says businesses need to be transparent about their activities so as “to allow people to . . . make their own choices about where their values are and what [environmental] price they’re willing to pay for things”.