Jewelry designer Sia Taylor sees A Golden Seed as both a reflection on her 15 years of work in fine jewelry and a meditation on nature, sculpture, and gold’s preciousness. The new collection sprouted from Taylor’s signature collection of dots, showing her craftsmanship and progression as a jeweler, she says.
A team of artisans in her Somerset, England, studio—including Taylor herself—handcraft each bud, butterfly, and leaf to create a delicate dance of shapes from the meadows that have long inspired Taylor’s work. Every tiny imperfection is perfect, says Taylor, who feels A Golden Seed is emblematic of her life and career and a showcase for who she is now and where she hopes her jewelry will go in the future.
“I’m constantly developing, flowing from one collection to the next. My work has moved from those tiny, simple dots into leaves and then into raindrops,” Taylor says. “It’s been a natural evolution of going through those different elements that have caught my eye or grabbed my attention somehow.
“With this collection, it was like I needed to go back to where I started, which was this seed idea,” Taylor says. “It developed in my mind during the pandemic lockdown. We were all walking—that seemed like all we were doing. We were sitting outside, enjoying the sun, exploring. I wanted to capture that beauty, to re-create those moments of stillness and silence.”
A Golden Seed’s September debut feels ideally timed, with summer’s warmth turning to autumn’s chill: It’s the season when people typically pull back from the outside world to cocoon in their homes. The changing weather and environment make you think of how nature affects you, as flowers grow and fade or leaves emerge, then fall. A Golden Seed’s earrings, bracelets, and necklaces are designed to celebrate the macroscopic—what’s happening in the world around you—as well as the minuscule, since you have to look closely at the small details of the jewelry.
“I wanted to create in gold a feeling of the wind blowing through the meadow,” Taylor says. “I had this image in my head of a little section of that meadow in your hands. You could see it moving—the tiny butterflies, the flowers, all shimmering and moving in your hand like a kind of sculpture. You almost became invisible; it was like you became a part of it.”
Taylor centers around her work on gold—she has grown her fine jewelry business without the traditional reliance on diamonds, gemstones, or engagement ring sales. She and her team use a range of techniques to create organically scattered, dimensional, and dense pieces. Gold is folded into forms resembling wings, melted into tiny seeds, and cast to create miniature pods. These elements are combined with hand-cut gold petals into textured compositions.
Part of Taylor’s process in creating the Golden Seed pieces was to bring natural elements like sticks, leaves, flowers, and pods into her studio to study. She then cut each shape out of paper and played with the composition until it felt right.
Taylor says she hopes people think of her jewelry like the best record you ever heard—every song distinct, yet they work together to tell a complete story.
“I’m not a traditional jeweler in any way—I studied fine art,” Taylor says. “I don’t design or do a fully realized drawing. It’s more abstract. I’m trying to capture an overall feeling.”
Top: Sia Taylor’s latest collection, A Golden Seed, is a meditation on nature and full of small yet significant details, the designer says. (Photos courtesy of Sia Taylor)
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