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In an age of instant gratification, mass production and rapid trend cycles, we treat jewellery as an opportunity to step off the hamster wheel and smell the roses. Just as the slow food and slow fashion movements have arisen in response to industrialised practices and environmental concerns, slow jewellery represents a conscious return to care, craft, and connection.
At its heart, slow jewellery is about intention. It’s jewellery created with purpose - not only to adorn, but to tell stories, encapsulate personal values, stand the tests of time and fulfil certain environmental and socioeconomic duties.
The notion of ‘slow jewellery’ challenges the disposable mind-set that has pervaded the practice of self-adornment in the last few decades. Whilst low-quality, mass-produced items are designed for the ‘here and now’ – to be worn a limited number of times and forgotten – slow jewellery honours the true value of materials and labour. It reclaims jewellery’s ancient role as a carrier of personal and cultural meaning: a symbolic art form that commemorates the spectrum of human experience.
We’ve spoken before about the crucial role of the Circular Economy in jewellery, which encourages the designing of products for durability, reuse, and regeneration. In the Circular Economy model, waste is minimised and the value of resources is maintained for as long as possible. In practice, this means favouring recycled metals and gemstones over newly mined ones, remodelling heirloom pieces, prioritising proper care and repairs, and crafting with longevity in mind. In essence, this is largely what we mean when we say ‘slow jewellery’.
Whilst we design our jewellery with a passionate attention to aesthetic detail – from the intricacy of our hand-engraved motifs to the tonal pairings of our fancy coloured gemstones – we believe the beauty of jewellery goes deeper than surface-level. Equally important to the exquisite cut of a sapphire and the polished gleam of 18ct yellow gold is the story each piece of jewellery tells.
Whether a commitment ring solidifying a romantic relationship or a pendant celebrating retirement after a successful career, our bespoke jewellery commissions exist to encapsulate the experiences of our clients. A 2015 study from the Journal of Design History found that human beings are more likely to keep and care for objects that are imbued with narrative or memory - especially when they’re tied to our identity, relationships, or heritage. In this way, slow jewellery becomes an act of preservation. It resists obsolescence not only through physical durability, but through emotional resonance; authentic stories that long outlive the latest trend.
Part of working with you to develop your bespoke design is understanding you as an individual: your creative inspirations, what makes you tick, and your fundamental intentions for the piece of jewellery you’re envisaging. Beyond budget and ring size, our bespoke consultation might drift into the realm of your earliest memories of jewellery, or how you might describe your partner’s character in three words.
Creating slow jewellery is also exactly as it says on the tin - it’s about refining and cherishing the processes inherent. Recently, one of our craftspeople said to us:
“We can’t rush your jewellery designs; there’s too much to think about.”
In a world that travels so fast, we believe that patience, care and contemplation create a different kind of value. Our designs call upon time-honoured tools and techniques to reimagine materials and traditions in the contemporary context. We collaborate with highly skilled craftspeople in independent, family-run workshops where centuries of knowledge are passed down from one generation to the next. Through experimental processes we learn together, pushing the boundaries and pausing auto-pilot in favour of exploration.
As such, every piece of Lebrusan Studio jewellery is the result not just of hours - but years - of discovering, evolving, and honing. Our small in-house Design Team of two works closely together to nurture initial seeds into fully-fledged blooms, before entrusting our partner craftspeople – selected carefully because their values align with ours – to bring these concepts to life. From casting to polishing, stone-setting to hand-engraving, each craftsperson specialises in a specific stage of the process.
As celebrated by our Created in the UK certification, our jewels are crafted locally to us in the UK. Most of our partner workshops are based within a square-mile radius of our headquarters in Hatton Garden, so we can generally transport jewellery from one stage to the next on foot. This might not be as efficient as outsourcing our manufacturing to one factory that can take care of everything beneath one roof, but it enables us to support a variety of local craft businesses whilst minimising the mileage and carbon emissions of our jewellery.
As we touched upon previously, decades of surplus wealth and overconsumption have sadly generated a culture of wastefulness. Everywhere we look, perfectly beautiful jewels, materials and components are discarded for a lack of love or vision. As we transition from an era of overabundance into one of resource scarcity, we’ve been thinking carefully about how we can revel in the possibilities of circularity, redefining the notion of ‘misfits’.
Alchemy is the seemingly magical process of transformation, creation, or combination. The one-off pieces of our Reclaimed Vintage collection pair antique Victorian components with new parts crafted recently in recycled gold: alchemy realised. It takes us a little while to bring these jewels to life, because each is a unique and unrepeatable combination of elements, sourced with consideration and married through patience, trial and error.
Meanwhile, our Broken Stars rings further challenge the boundaries of traditional jewellery design by championing broken fragments of diamonds, sapphires, rubies and emeralds. Secured in 14ct recycled gold in what we call our ‘anarchy setting’ – an organic, textured take on grain-setting pioneered by our Founder Arabel Lebrusan – these chips of precious gemstone are arranged in unique constellations, each ring different to the last. Precious gemstones and metals are formed over deep time through complex geological and cosmic processes. The Broken Stars collection rescues these survivors from rejection, offering them more time to shine.
In the face of a climate crisis and global inequality, jewellery is not frivolous but a powerful vehicle for change. At Lebrusan Studio, we treat jewellery as an arm of creative activism; an opportunity to redistribute wealth and power, tell the stories that need to be told, and advocate for transparency. This is rarely a straightforward approach, but in doing so, we educate our clients and invite them too to become part of a slower, more mindful system; to think carefully about what their belongings represent and invest not in trends, but in their own values.
In a consumer culture built on novelty, choosing slow jewellery is an act of resistance. It’s a way of saying:
“I care about what I wear. I care about how it’s made. I want to hold on to things, not throw them away.”
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Love, Arabel & Team
It's possible to embrace the beautiful materials that Mother Nature offers us without harming our beautiful planet. By asking questions, simplifying supply chains and sharing our knowledge with the world, we can achieve this balance.
