A new jewellery collection by Fernando Jorge is called Armour. ‘Armour is the idea of something that you put on to protect you, whether in the more literal sense, to physically protect you, or in the idea of wearing jewellery as protection,’ explains Jorge. Making its debut at specialist fair PAD London, the collection includes a choice of earrings, a cuff bracelet and a standout necklace.
For this collection, Jorge, who was born in Brazil and trained at Central Saint Martins in London, where he set up his eponymous business in 2011, made brown diamonds, polished smoky quartz, deep black ebony, Brazilian Preciosa wood blond-tone tagua seed his palette. It’s a blend of opposites, as precious gems are set with more humble natural materials.
All materials unite to form geometric shapes.
‘The design spark was the shape of the shield, which also appears in nature as an almond or a leaf, and is very well known in jewellery as the marquise cut,’ Jorge explains.
‘In sacred geometry it is the vesica piscis, the shape formed where two circles overlap, and it represents protection and the union of opposites.’ Cue a sculptural cuff bracelet assembled from carved shapes of preciosa wood, detailed with smoky quartz and brown diamond, all set in yellow gold.
‘These ideas combined were the starting point of the Armour collection,’ says Jorge. ‘I developed the designs thinking of this protective and combative idea, the tension between nature and the man-made, and the idea of fragility and strength. Each piece is constructed on that principle.’