Completedworks has already found a devoted following for its intimate, sculptural jewellery and ceramic homeware. Now it is adding a men’s collection to the mix, made to “disorientate and challenge”
- Who is it? London-based jewellery brand Completedworks, which is launching a new collection featuring its first pieces for men
- Why do I want it? Intimate, sculptural pieces which “disorientate and challenge” the conventions of contemporary men’s jewellery
- Where can I buy it? Find the full collection on Completedworks’ website
Who is it? Completedworks, the London-based jewellery brand run by designer Anna Jewsbury, has found a devoted following for its sculptural pieces which “loop, twist, flow [and] enfold” the body, taking inspiration from ceramics, classical statuary and the theory of reductionism. The latter is a fascination which stems from Jewsbury’s less-than-traditional background as a jeweller, having studied philosophy and mathematics at university. “I always get asked, how do you go from that to jewellery?” Jewsbury previously told AnOther. “But I think for me, like with maths and philosophy, it’s about finding new ways to describe the world. That’s the approach you can take with the jewellery as well.”
Today Completedworks, which also encompasses ceramic homeware alongside its jewellery and fine jewellery collections, launches its latest venture: a series of pieces designed with men in mind. “Our approach has always been to explore ideas and emotions rather than specifically create something exclusively for women – it is only at the final stages of design that we divert the flow and form of the piece towards a woman,” says Jewsbury of how the collection first came about. “[But] it is very easy to just create a different diversion – one towards a man instead, for instance.”
As such, the men’s and women’s collections flow from one to the other, building on much the same design sensibilities – indeed, most of the pieces could be worn whatever gender you might identify (“we’ve had male clients from the very beginning,” says Jewsbury). Running under the banner of ‘a selection of pieces for a reality that is in a constant state of flux’, the new men’s pieces span rings, necklaces, bracelets and earrings, and represent a riposte to what Jewsbury calls the “accrued baggage” of men’s jewellery – particularly around those pieces deemed ‘acceptable’ for men, namely cufflinks and signet rings. “From a very broad perspective, where with the women’s pieces we have often looked to distort and subvert conventions and traditions, with the men’s we have looked more to disorientate and challenge those same conventions,” Jewsbury says. “[We wanted] to create pieces that generate uncertainty and thwart any simple attempt at a division between the genders.”
Why do I want it? Jewsbury has previously talked about the intimacy of jewellery as a medium – “It’s small and intimate ... people often get asked about their jewellery, where it came from and what are the associations with it,” she said – and the men’s collection continues this rationale, with pieces that trace the line of the body. A looping cuff, for example, embeds itself into the ear, another ‘climber’ earring, in platinum-plated sterling silver, hugs and wraps around the lobe.
Other pieces speak to Jewsbury’s preoccupation with the imperfect (her popular Fold collection was inspired by the ‘deflated’, misshapen ceramics of mixed-media artist Ekaterina Bazhenova-Yamasaki), like a twisting, “unruly” chain necklace decorated with varying black baroque pearls, or a battered cuff bracelet. Of how she hopes people might feel wearing the collection – or indeed any of her pieces – she says “we want them to feel that the form of a piece of jewellery can express a process of thought in action ... that beyond the aesthetic of the piece they are wearing there is infused somewhere a sense of urgency, dynamism and vulnerability.”
And, while urgency might inform the design, Jewsbury herself has built Completedworks on far slower ethos: each of the pieces is made to order over a period of weeks, with those visiting the Regent’s Park studio able to alter elements of the design to fit their own sensibilities (she also offers a completely bespoke service, whereby pieces are created entirely from scratch). It is an ideology that seems particularly pertinent to our current moment, whereby there is a growing desire for items created meaningfully and sustainably (most of Completedworks’ pieces are created from recycled metals), particularly in light of the outbreak of Covid-19, which has called the oftentimes frenetic pace of the fashion industry into question.
“It’s been really challenging not being together with the team but I’m so grateful to them for adapting and making it work,” Jewsbury says of her own experience of creation during the past six months. “We’ve been able to do more online with our community – hosting meditation sessions, poetry readings ... we have an organic food-growing session coming up. It’s been an opportunity to reset and refocus.”
Where can I buy it? Find the full collection on Completedworks’ website.
