With pieces stocked at SSENSE and Dover Street Market, Seb Brown is the self-taught jewellery designer playing with the familiar and the strange
- Who is it? Seb Brown is an Australian jewellery designer based in Paris
- Why do I want it? Entirely hand-crafted pieces that play with the familiar and the strange
- Where can I find it? Ready-made pieces are available directly through the designer’s website, Liberty London, SSENSE, Dover Street Market, and Farfetch, amongst others. For bespoke pieces, clients can book an appointment with the studio here
Who is it? Australian designer Seb Brown’s first foray into the world of jewellery was a simple university project. “I studied graphic design at RMIT [in Melbourne] and towards the end of the degree, you could do whatever you want,” he recalls. “A friend had done a jewellery course and she told me about a supplier. I bought materials, and, well, the rest is history.” After a year in Berlin, Brown returned to Melbourne and pursued jewellery full-time, gently pacing the growth of his namesake label by crafting pieces for people he knew. “I’d sell those to fund the next few pieces, and I’ve just gradually, slowly grown,” he reflects, “and I’m still kind of growing in that way.”
Brown is entirely self-taught – his pure understanding of material as a canvas allows him to instinctively translate his diverse inspirations. “I think the lack of formal training offers a naivety to the work that really appeals to people,” says the designer. Still, he credits his training in graphic design for his distinctive aesthetic axed on scale, colour, and layout. “I spend a lot of time laying out colour combos that are just the right side of ugly,” he laughs, “I’m going for something appealing, but I’ll add something a bit off to make it kind of fun.” As for the forms, the somewhat familiar references are anchored in his love for Mediterranean relics. “A lot of the shapes come from that. So, there is a reminder to the viewer of the past,” he says. “And they can’t quite put their finger on it. But I think it subtly reminds them of something they may have seen before.”
Brown works across all forms of jewellery but it’s his rings for which he is perhaps the most well known. The designer pinpoints significant shifts in style, from the “faceted” to the “more blobby, lumpy period” and then his “signets with little scattered stones” – which is when he took off commercially. “I was just carving the signets and then laying out the stones to kind of practice my stone setting,” he recalls, “and then I made a few and thought: well, this idea is kind of cool.” His first signet collection was picked up by Liberty in London, who ordered 200 rings straight up. And, well, the rest is history.
Why do I want it? Brown’s designs magically oscillate between the familiar and the strange, the eternal and the fleeting, all in one design. The off-kilter placement and unusual scale of stones-to-metal catches the eye and then make you look twice. “Jewellery is a conversation starter – there’s always a story behind it,” he says, “but it’s not like clothing. It might take you a few meetings to notice the piece. And then the story unfolds over time.” Gold is his preferred canvas as “the gold molecule is indestructible,” he explains. “It can be re-melted and remade. You could make one ring into a new ring every single day for the rest of eternity.” He then leaves it half polished – “a bit dull” – as then “you really have to focus on the ring.”
The designer has recently relocated to Paris, France, but his headquarters are still in Melbourne where everything, from casting to setting, is completed in-house. “We have a workshop and a showroom which are connected but it was designed to be almost like a laboratory, a dentist’s office,” says Brown. “It’s the complete opposite of the work so it allows the jewellery to lean into the craft, the colourful, the bright, to really stand out.” The space also allows him to intimately connect with his clients (approximately 80% of his sales are bespoke commissions). “Dealing with customers – coming up with something special for them – is so much more rewarding than just sending out a line sheet.”
Brown regularly plays with other creative mediums – furniture, glassware, sculpture, printmaking – as side projects but now, as he sets up a “mini-Melbourne office”, he is ready to formally expand the Seb Brown universe. “My husband is a fashion designer so we are going to design clothes together, see what comes from it, how it fits with the jewellery,” he says. “I like to experiment. I guess, at the end of the day, everything I do is an experiment.”
Where can I find it? Ready-made pieces are available directly through the designer’s website, Liberty London, SSENSE, Dover Street Market, and Farfetch, amongst others. For bespoke pieces, clients can book an appointment with the studio here.