History of jewelry: the design of British designer Wendy Ramshaw, between fantasy and geometric rigor.
The design has so many roads as those of the imagination. But there are roads that are better than others: a clear, imaginative street, but not confused. On one of these way has set out the British designer Wendy Ramshaw, born in Sunderland in 1939 and passed away in 2018.. Her jewels are not just jewelry, but precious objects that derive from her work as an artist. She works in collaboration with her husband, David Watkins, who is also a successful sculptor and jeweler, but she has a style all its own.
Watkins and Ramshaw met in 1961, when they were students at the University of Reading. Since then, private and professional lives are intertwined.
She first came to attention when Mary Quant sold her paper jewelry. Customers were asked to cut out the jewelry and assemble it from paper templates. Her signature pieces were developed around 1965 and consist of gold rings placed on a single stand. This was seen as an innovative way to store jewelry, earning her the Design Council Award for Innovation in 1972.
She loves lines reminiscent of the paintings of Kandinsky, fragile balances but at the same time safe, not made for noble metals strength, while is royal the shape that contains them. Its multiple rings were an idea of the seventies and still are loved now. The necklaces that can be exchanged for slight sculptures, earrings from nerve lines, are exposed jewels also in many museums. They are very loved, but they have a drawback: it is very difficult to find them on the market and those who own them have never sells. Alessia Mongrando
