When designer Joy Haugaard, creative director of Lionheart, a fine jewelry brand she cofounded in 2018 with her sister, Sarah, was growing up in Aarhus, Denmark, on the east coast of the Jutland peninsula, the area was so rural that “there were more horses and cows than people,” she tells JCK.
Haugaard moved to Copenhagen around age 10, and then to New York City in 2005, at age 15, but she credits her years in Aarhus, now Denmark’s second largest city, with instilling in her a deep and abiding passion for horses.
“My first horse was around 6 years of age, and I fell in love,” Haugaard says. “I feel like they have this unique blend of beauty and grace. I can’t explain it, but they give me some sort of energy when I’m around them.”
To honor the equine qualities—“like freedom and grace and beauty”—that Haugaard associates with her mother, who raised her and Sarah as a single mom, Lionheart introduced in August a collection of 28 horse-inspired 18k gold jewels called Legacy, so named because Haugaard intends for the range to become a staple of her brand, and to constantly be infused with new styles.
Legacy is rife with chunky gold medallions featuring horse heads, rings and pendants shaped like horses, and pieces adorned with other equine motifs such as horseshoes and horse bits, most of them accented by diamonds. The collection also includes a charm, available in silver as well as 14k and 18k gold, that represents the logo of an organization near and dear to Haugaard’s heart: 13 Hands Equine Rescue, a charity in upstate New York.
“It’s a wonderful organization that saves abandoned horses, horses that are going to slaughterhouses, horses that are ‘ugly’ and nobody wants,” she says. “When I found them a couple of years ago, I reached out to the woman who runs it, and said, ‘I’m going to make a collection, and I want to donate to your cause.’ And I think she just thought, ‘Yeah, okay, whatever.’ And then when I finally did show up, she was over the moon. I love her, and I love the organization. It’s a way for me to connect and give back and be a part of something that’s way bigger than what I do.”
All proceeds from the sale of the 13 Hands charms go to 13 Hands. “There are so many horses that are dying and that don’t need to die,” Haugaard says. “They’re not sick. There’s nothing wrong with them, but they need help. And it’s very hard when you go there and you’re around it and you see an animal like that that can’t speak. And you’ve got to be the voice for them.”
Top: Octagon medallion in 18k gold with 0.15 ct. t.w. diamonds, $6,445
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