Lisa Walker’s Unconventional Jewels Make Italian Vogue

Wellingtonian Lisa Walker’s “large, colourful jewels … are ‘food for art’, according to Vogue Italia, and “it’s the colour that first strikes the observer”.

“This designer from New Zealand is constantly seeking to offer an aesthetic that is different but not disorienting. Unconventional materials, such as old towels, mobile phones and doll parts, are used to make jewels. These items abandon their previous function and are combined with pastel colors to become pendants, necklaces and bracelets.

“It’s an intense recycling of items in the purest sense. Objects that have been thrown away or abandoned come back to life in a different way thanks to the creativity of a modern, visionary ‘Doctor Frankenstein’ who has chosen to take things to the extreme as a style choice.

“Walker creates pieces with a ‘pop’ soul that seem as if they’ve come from a “retro future,” that Technicolor future imaged in the 1960s and 1970s with films like 2001: A Space Odyssey directed by Stanley Kubrick or Sleeper directed by Woody Allen.”

Walker graduated in craft and design from the Otago Polytechnic Art School. She was then accepted into a jewellery course at the prestigious Arts Academy in Munich and studied under famed professor Otto Künzli.

Original article by Paola Aurucci, Vogue Italia, November 20, 2014.

Photo by Caroline van Hoek Gallery.