Meditations on Form
Jewellery by Melanie Eddy
Born and raised in Bermuda, Melanie Eddy has lived and worked in London for the past two decades. Despite the distance, a deep affinity for her island home runs through the bold geometric faceted forms that have become her signature, and for which she is gaining wide recognition.
The past few years have seen her work included in two exhibitions at Sotheby’s (New York and London) and a commission from the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), where one of her ring sets is now on permanent display. “Much of my work is rooted in a sense of place,” she says. “My work now is even more aware of my connections to Bermuda because of the time spent away. Often, I think my pieces are meditations on memories of Bermuda.”
Eddy cites the simplicity of the island’s vernacular architecture as an influence, alongside the angular shadows cast by the stark sunlight, and the taught triangular sails of the Bermuda rig. “Triangles are important to me symbolically,” she says of the shape which forms the backbone of every design, referencing the Bermuda triangle and, more importantly, the triangle of trade which put Bermuda at the heart of the British Atlantic.
Places and spaces are key inspirations for the designer, who lists Tadao Ando, Le Corbusier and Zaha Hadid as influences. “Much of my work is informed by our relationship to architecture, both how we inhabit architectural spaces and how they transform our environments,” says Eddy, who describes jewellery as “intimate architecture – the design of structures for the body.” She adds: “Much like architecture, most of its meaning is in the interaction.”
The Faceted Collection
Melanie Eddy comes from a legacy of stone masons. Her grandfather’s family owned a limestone quarry, and this rich history of uniquely Bermudian craftsmanship has had a deep influence on her practice. “When I was young, our house sat right up against the limestone that the plot was cut out of,” she says. Familiarity with stone mason templates, which sat in the family’s garage, would ultimately lead her to create her own unique templated approach to jewellery making.
“The work that I have become known for was first launched in 2007 at my degree show from the MA Design: Jewellery programme at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design,” she says. It was a during this time that her interest in architecture first began. “I developed a particular focus on how geometry is explicitly used in the creation of sacred spaces to foster a sense of solace, peace, and spiritual experience,” she explains. Eddy began researching Gothic architecture, with a focus on the ways cathedrals were built. “When they explained how the blocks would be cut from masons’ templates, I knew immediately what that meant, and that began the journey of finding a system to create my own templates.”
This geometric approach to construction has become a thread in her practice and remains a consistent way of working almost two decades later. “The work that is now recognisable as my work began with these sculptural pieces devoid of the ornamentation of gemstones, initially in sterling silver and then gold.” Eddy’s practice has since expanded to include intricate, and equally bold, gem-set pieces, but form remains the driving force. “I always start with metalwork. Adornment comes in time. I start with the sculptural form.”
The High Jewellery Collection
In November 2020, in the wake of the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, British Vogue profiled Melanie Eddy as one of five Black British-based designers reshaping the world of fine jewellery. “This precipitated a shift in many senses,” she says. “I was used to my work being profiled, but not myself. It made me recontextualise the space I inhabited within jewellery. I had made ambitious pieces but high jewellery for me seemed beyond reach. It prompted the realisation that not only was my work seen as being part of that aspect of jewellery, but its very existence was challenging assumptions within this area.”
The following autumn, Eddy had several pieces selected for display in Brilliant & Black: A Jewellery Renaissance. The groundbreaking exhibition, which was curated by Melanie Grant and held at Sotheby’s in New York City in September 2021, showcased the work of 21 leading Black fine jewellers. The experience proved life changing. “It pushed my practice further than I ever thought possible,” she says. “The work that came together for the showcase was, for me, a love letter to Bermuda – my childhood in Bermuda and the island’s cultural heritage that shaped me.”
Eddy collaborated with Melanie Grant and Sotheby’s once again for a second iteration of Brilliant & Black: The Age of Enlightenment, held in their London gallery in September 2022, where she exhibited three bold large gem-set works. “Whilst the pieces for my first Sotheby’s show were a love letter to Bermuda and my life there, these pieces were a shift in acknowledgement of wider thoughts and places which I have shaped me,” explains Eddy. “It was about being present where I am now, and all the gifts that has brought me.”
The Breakers Collection
Melanie Eddy completed her first artist residency at Penland School of Craft in North Carolina in January 2023. The residency, which gave Eddy the time and space to begin a new body of work which she had been ruminating on for some time, proved transformative. Not only did it allow her to focus solely on jewellery making, but the timing also coincided with her beloved grandmother having a serious fall, from which she would not recover. Eddy describes the resulting Breakers Collection, which marks a new way of working for the designer, as being “birthed out of grief but also love.”
“I was thinking a lot about Bermuda,” she says of the collection, which is still in development. “I lost my uncle to the ocean, and the day I flew to Penland was the anniversary of the day he went missing at sea. Whilst at Penland my grandmother also took a turn for the worse and so I was thinking a lot about her. My making approach became much more intuitive and guided by form – the outline and profile of the pieces – rather than using templates, as I do with other collections.”
Eddy explains: “This work is about Bermuda. It’s about the swirling currents around the island and how they shape both the island and us. It’s about the rogue wave that took my uncle, the waves I delight in, and the reefs in between them.” She concludes, “I liked the idea of making something sensual and smooth with softened edges out of such forces. Like rocks, or shards of glass worn smooth by water over time into the rounded pebbles, or sea glass, that we find on the beach – still made of the same stuff, but visibly altered, the same but also different somehow.”
Sponsored by Butterfield with support from the Bermuda Foundation. Exhibition curated by Eve Godet Thomas. The Ondaatje Wing, October 2024 – June 2025.
