It is what I remember most clearly from my first job 20 years ago, that ring of my colleague’s. The work stuff has long faded, but that huge, raw-looking stone, an aquamarine, set in a band of gold so simple as to appear almost ad hoc, still twinkles in my mind’s eye. It was quite unlike any piece of jewellery I had seen, and it had been designed by a friend of my colleague’s called Pippa Small. She wasn’t even a proper jewellery designer, apparently.
Pretty soon, though, that was the name on the lips of everyone in fashion, and her rings — all set with large unadorned stones — were on everyone’s fingers. Jewellery design had changed for ever. Today, alongside the faceting and the polishing of the more mainstream gem trade, there is Small with her — as she puts it, “pebbly rocks that haven’t been interfered with” — and the countless imitators who have followed in her wake. Her fans encompass stars such as Emma Watson and Natalie Portman, and practically all of the British front row.
It nearly didn’t happen, Small tells me. What I was told back then is true: she wasn’t a jewellery designer. She was a social anthropology graduate working with community-based NGOs in places such as Borneo and Thailand. “What we were looking for were ways for communities to generate their own income, which usually meant doing versions of the craft they have always done but adapted thanks to the eye of someone from a different market.”
She was travelling to places where the stones were amazing, and made the odd piece for herself, then for friends. Then friends of friends started wanting to commission her. “Originally I thought, ‘No, no, no, I am doing NGO work, but the jewellery kept being there.” Suddenly she was at Paris Fashion Week, then stocked at Barneys, New York’s flagship store of what’s hottest. The jewellery took over.
But Small, 46, has never forgotten her NGO roots and has worked on a number of occasions with different charities trying to facilitate the kind of community-based income generation that she was interested in all those years ago. Next week she launches a seasonal diffusion line born out of her longstanding work with the Afghan arts charity Turquoise Mountain. Based in Kabul, the charity employs craftsmen and women to produce traditional crafts that can be sold abroad.
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Pippa Small Turquoise Mountain, as her new line is called, for this season focuses on two stones, lapis and tiger’s eye, in bold gold-plated silver settings. Prices are a fraction of those of her sublime mainline collection. (What would I give for her uncut diamond ring with its six smoky stones? Not, alas, £4,000.) This means that anyone who has, like me, been dreaming of owning a piece of Pippa Small since forever ago, now has the opportunity to do so. I love the Luma lapis earrings (£305) and the Murwarid tiger’s eye bracelet (£290), but with 73 pieces to choose from, there’s an embarrassment of (affordable) riches.
Small is delighted to be able to produce more accessible pieces. “When I started, gold was much less expensive and so were stones. The Chinese are buying up all the stones now so the price has soared. My mainline collection is as a result more expensive than it used to be.”
It’s also important to the Afghans who work at Turquoise Mountain that prices should be kept low. “They need sales. These can’t be pieces that people need to think about buying. The Afghans need to produce things people can buy right away.” Small has made the Afghan craftspeople her employees rather than just giving them a percentage of the profits, in the hope that this will create a more sustainable business structure.
Both men and women work on the jewellery in Kabul, but it is the women, of course, who run the biggest risks. “They are very brave; they are beacons of hope. It is not so much about the economic factor for them. Most live with their husbands or their families and aren’t expected to contribute financially, as that is not what women do traditionally. More it is that they have a really strong desire to be out in the world, to create, to partake.” One woman, Storai Stanizai, wants to become a famous jewellery designer. “Her grandfather was a jewel-cutter for the king. She wants to follow in his footsteps. She is very ambitious.”
Kabul remains a perilous place. Small is going there a couple of weeks after we speak and is already anxious. “I am becoming increasingly nervous about travelling there as the situation is definitely getting worse. Now that the troops are gone and the occupation-related boom is over, it is more important than ever that the Afghans are not abandoned. We need to give them a reason to defy Isis or the Taliban.”
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Buying a beautiful piece of jewellery made by Stanizai and her peers seems the ultimate win-win.
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Instagram: @annagmurphy