Earthly wonders: Solange Azagury-Partridge presents Supernature
Solange Azagury-Partridge has been busy - busier than usual. As well as refurbishing her private showroom on west London’s Chilworth Street, into which she moved last summer, she’s just finished putting the final touches to her new collection, Supernature, which comprises almost 60 pieces. “Murray [Partridge, her advertising-director husband] was going mad,” she jokes; “he said ‘why do you have to do such big collections?!’” To be fair, she had a lot of ground to cover.
Supernature has its roots in the Japanese Buddhist philosophy of the five elements: earth, water, fire, air and aether. “The modern periodic table has 140 elements, gold, silver, neon… but I wanted to strip it back and concentrate on the classic five,” she says. As is always the case with Azagury-Partridge, there are no straightforward interpretations. Instead each element has been given a sideways glance, reimagined as intelligent, occasionally tongue-in-cheek, but always beautifully crafted jewels.
A series of seven cocktail rings represents the Earth in the colours of the rainbow, centred around rich coloured gemstones. The Red ring sees cabochon rubies forming the body of a Cochineal beetle, which is ground up to produce red carmine dye for food and lipstick, while in the Green ring lacquer fern leaves coil around a cabochon emerald.
The Blood Orange ring plays on words, with red-tinged lacquer droplets dripping down the sides of a mandarin garnet; and there’s a nod to less natural Earthly wares with the Mellow Yellow ring, 18-carat gold clusters fashioned into the chemical composition of LSD.
Some themes are clear-cut: Water is a series of White Witch-appropriate, diamond-paved white gold icicles, falling like stalactites from necklaces and single earrings, or surrounding a cocktail ring whose surface is a diamond slice, as glassy as a frozen Narnia lake. Others are more obscure: Air becomes balloon-shaped 18-carat gold earrings and speech bubble pendants whose contents are customisable so you can choose your own variety of “hot air”.
While Azagury-Patridge is best known for her love of riotous colour, some of the most covetable pieces from Supernature are the most pared back. Fire is represented as jagged lightning bolts of black and white gold, plain or shot through with round and baguette-cut diamonds.
Designed to be worn as mismatching earrings, they range in size from tiny flashes to full-blown, apocalypse-like strikes which the designer brings to life with a pantomime crackle. The piece de resistance from this set is the Storm necklace, in which these diamond tendrils crash from a sizeable rough labradorite, its iridescent planes refracting a rainbow of hues “like a storm cloud”.
Azagury-Patridge hasn’t abandoned her kaleidoscopic leanings altogether. Aether - “the spiritual, mysterious things you don’t understand” - assumes earthly form as places of worship. Five architectural floor plans are transformed into earrings whose precious gemstones correspond to the colours of that particular religion.
Notre Dame is rendered in Catholic red, tipped with purple diamonds; a Mayan temple is depicted in pink sapphires redolent of the ancient civilisation’s hieroglyphs; and a Buddhist temple is outlined in a joyful array of rubies, emeralds and yellow sapphires - the colours of the Burmese flag.
“They’re just all great shapes,” says Azagury-Partridge. “I’ve always loved floor plans and thought that they are quite graphic, so this was a good way of introducing them.” The silhouettes also appear without gems, in plain, glossy yellow gold, allowing for a more accessible price tag. “They have a nice bohemian vibe,” Azagury-Partridge says.
Returning to the Earth suite, she brandishes The Force ring: spikes of yellow gold which clutch a lacquer magnet between them. “This is the force field, it represents the Faraday magnetic lines… it’s a bit of a mad one.” From electromagnetic theory to chemical compounds to ancient religions, like all of Azagury-Partridge’s work, Supernature may indeed be “a bit mad”, but her clients wouldn’t have it any other way.
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