WINNERS 2026
WINNERS 2026
Winners : Show Off - Statement Pieces
Designs and /or finished pieces showing creative flair with innovative use of materials and which demonstrate potential commercial viability.
My collection is inspired by endangered Iraqi and Bedouin jewellery traditions and the women who carried them across generations. Through sculptural forms, traditional craft, and bold visually Heavy pieces, I explore how cultural heritage can be preserved, reimagined, and worn within contemporary fashion and diasporic digital subcultures.
I was inspired by the idea of jewellery as a living organism rather than an accessory. Through Metamorphosis, I imagined an alien parasite that gradually transforms the human body, using insect anatomy and transparent materials to challenge conventional ideas of adornment and redefine the relationship between jewellery and wearer.
Velare is inspired by the quiet beauty of transformation in nature, particularly the skeletal forms of decaying leaves. Their delicate structures reveal hidden strength and intricate patterns, influencing sculptural silhouettes that envelop pearls. The collection celebrates protection, renewal and the elegance found in organic forms shaped by time and change.
My collection Ex-millinery draws on Rose Bertin, dressmaker and former milliner to Marie Antoinette. In this line I explore the tension between maker and wearer, translating dressmaking into wearable pieces. Pin-heads and ribbon motifs rendered in pearls, pavé and silver appear frozen mid-construction, draped across a mannequin as if still being made.
Winners: Responsible Thinking - Sustainable Eco-Heroes
Designs and/or finished pieces made with responsibly sourced or sustainable materials to reflect the growing demand and interest in sustainability. These pieces should demonstrate potential commercial viability.
Shimmer explores Brazilian identity through the intersection of traditional craft and contemporary jewellery. Hand-making techniques, including natural dyeing, weaving, and stone cutting, are combined with digital fabrication to unite ancestral knowledge with modern design. Working directly with artisan communities, I transform Brazilian vernacular materials, including discarded Camurupim fish scales and Capim Dourado, into contemporary jewellery alongside precious materials. The collection challenges conventional notions of preciousness, positioning craft, cultural heritage, and ethical collaboration at the heart of luxury. Bridging Brazil and Europe, Shimmer celebrates innovation, sustainability, and the enduring value of cultural preservation.
Cultivated is built around materials that were already here, overlooked. The oyster shell is genuine waste — reclaimed from Soho restaurants, where it would otherwise be discarded. Shaping shell involves extensive water use in the lapidary process; that water is continuously recycled within my tools rather than run to waste. My topaz is sourced through an established company, chosen for its traceability and ethical standards. As a sole trader, I produce in small, considered batches rather than at volume, avoiding overproduction and excess stock. Sustainability for me starts with a question: what's already been made, grown, or discarded that could be looked at differently?
My collection explores how contemporary jewellery can redefine value and preciousness. Growing up around my father’s date palm farm in Saudi Arabia shaped my connection to the date palm. I work with date seeds, transforming an overlooked material into jewellery that reflects cultural meaning, memory, and value.
Winners 2025
Ruby Lanigan’s collections and designs are deeply inspired by the world of architecture. Living between the beautiful landscapes of Shropshire and the dynamic cityscape of Birmingham, she is constantly captivated by the contrasting styles of architecture. The stark differences between the modern, brutalist designs and the ornate elegance of styles like Baroque architecture have always fascinated her. Her Baroque Architecture Neck Piece is inspired by the grandeur of Baroque architecture whose intricate, opulent gold detailing and vibrant, almost chaotic beauty, led to the creation of the bold necklace. This piece is versatile, offering five distinct ways to wear it. The reversible chain features two sides: one richly detailed and the other more minimalist. The attachable pendant can be worn separately on a chain.
Baroque Architecture Inspired Neckpiece
Materials: Gold plated Sterling Silver, Garnets, cubic zirconia
Yosef Salih Murad explores the tension between imposed stereotypes and the personal journey of navigating, adapting, and reclaiming space within those constraints.
His collection, Regular Irregularity, explores the tension between imposed stereotypes and the personal journey of navigating, adapting, and reclaiming space within those constraints.
As an artist of Iranian heritage, he has often felt the impact of western media’s portrayal of his culture, which can create a sense of alienation and hesitation in unfamiliar spaces. This experience informs his work, driving him to create pieces that invite curiosity and connection. He wants his designs to captivate viewers, draw them in and encourage meaningful engagement.
His jewellery is deeply inspired by the cultural and symbolic role of the Persian carpet - a space for rest, nourishment, and storytelling. Through his work, he aims to translate this sense of communal gathering into tangible forms. He hopes those who wear his pieces carry with them a quiet invitation for dialogue, however brief, sparking moments of connection.
Bloom Brooch: The vibrant colour and scent of a flower blooms representing new life and growth.
Materials: Silver, Gold Plating, Cotton and a Steel
Céline Munisso is a Luxembourgish multi-material carver and jewellery-based artist who works in wax, tagua nut, wood, silver, pearls, and gemstones. Inspired by birds, her work explores fragility, symbolism, and resilience through sculptural and soulful pieces. With roots in drawing, carving, and circus arts, she brings unique sensitivity to her practice, refining her craft and creating intimate, meaningful objects. Her style and themes aim to inspire, spark conversation, and raise awareness around conservation, especially bird protection.
Pay The Bill – The Avicide Collection - is created from love and concern for avian life, confronting their beauty and the threats they face. Birds are essential to ecosystems and culture worldwide. Through aesthetic reflection and education, the collection urges us to reconsider our role in their survival and the urgent need to protect them. Her piece ‘Sinful Indulgence’ confronts the hidden brutality of the French delicacy ortolan, where a tiny songbird is captured, drowned in Armagnac, and eaten whole under a napkin, said to hide the act from God. A baroque pearl on a silver plate stands for the bird, while candle and wine glass evoke ritual, grief, and indulgence. The cloche conceals and reveals, its red interior recalling blood and consumption. Together, these elements form a set table worn as a ring, asking whether the wearer will cover the truth with the cloche or confront it in plain sight.
Sinful indulgence
Materials: sterling silver, Anjan wood, freshwater baroque pearl, 24K gold
leaf, red cold enamel, copper
Lengling Bai’s jewellery explores sustainable materials, handcraft, and the body’s curves. Her work merges traditional techniques with contemporary scale, creating large, fluid forms that wrap and move with the wearer — reimagining jewellery as an intimate, organic extension. Shimmer Ripple is a collection of three necklaces, one pair of earrings, and one bracelet inspired by sunlight rippling on water. Using paper yarn and silver-plated copper wire, each piece is hand-knitted into flowing linear forms with subtle layers of light and shadow. The design explores purity, movement, and the body’s natural curves. Lightweight and wearable, it emphasises the beauty of sustainable materials and traditional craft. In contrast to the industrial world, Shimmer Ripple reconnects the wearer with nature’s quiet rhythm, capturing the elegance and harmony found in water and light.
Shimmer Ripple: Necklace 2 and earrings
Materials: Paper yarn, Copper, Silver-plated copper
Bocen Zhou is inspired by literary metaphors, art historical contexts, and ecological philosophy and her practice explores symbiotic relationships within the framework of the Anthropocene.
From Dust, To Dust is a series that explores the boundaries between matter and spirit, order and chaos, life and death. Using the symbol of the pebble, it narrates the cosmic cycle and the transformation of matter, revealing the romance and poetry embedded in the life cycles of the universe. Soil becomes both the origin and end of life-a boundary where cycles converge. Between earth and kiln, in transparency and silence, the work constructs a field of flow between order and entropy, linking the ephemeral existence of the individual with the eternal rhythms of the cosmos.
Through a dialogue between dust, soil, glass, and pebbles, the series weaves a narrative about the universe, time, and life-inviting the viewer to reconsider their relationship with nature, temporality, and the Other.
The pieces are crafted using her original kiln-formed glass bubble technique, incorporating natural soil, recycled glass, and reclaimed silver in response to the global demand for sustainable development.
The Life of A Pebble 2025
Materials: Soil, glass, silver
Lulu Tian’s practice bridges traditional metalsmithing techniques with experimental approaches to new materials, creating pieces that push the boundaries of adornment. Balancing craftsmanship and innovation, Lulu explores how jewellery can exist as both wearable art and conceptual design. Her collection ‘The Ocean Left It’s Dead Alive’ explores jewellery, biomaterials, and the marine cycle through fish scale bioplastic, a biodegradable material from discarded fish scales. Inspired by seaweed, plankton, and coral, the modular pieces flow organically across the body. Dyed with natural plant-based pigments, they celebrate ecological sensitivity while reflecting on beauty’s impermanence. These wearable forms embody the ocean’s resilience, drifting between adornment, transformation, and an eventual return to nature.
Soft Clusters I, Biotic Loop I, Microbloom II, Abyssal Threads I
Materials: Fish scales, glycerine, weld natural dye, brazilwood natural dye, madder natural dye, indigo natural dye, sorghum natural dye
Highly Commended 2025
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Luofan Zhuang
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Jiayang He
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Andrea Carrera
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One to Watch Show Off Statement category
Xiyue Mei
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One to Watch Show Off Statement Category
Dan Le
Winners 2024
Torquil Gordon's collection ‘Lands of Bent Grass’, draws inspiration from the island landscapes of the Outer Hebrides in Scotland, aiming to capture their unique character through jewellery. The collections inspiration was gathered through solo ‘wild’ camping trips into the Outer Hebrides capturing the fierce weather and dramatic landscape through film. Translated into metal, each meticulously crafted piece serves as a wearable memento to the landscape that inspires it.
Overgrowing Rings: sterling silver
Tina Jiao is a jewellery designer, specializing in traditional jade carving techniques such as Devil's work ball and Chain carving. Her work reimagines jade jewellery by blending heritage craftsmanship with contemporary design. Exhibited internationally at Gallery Marzee and featured in Current Obsession magazine, Tina’s creations explore themes of multiculturalism, movement, and individuality, offering a modern take on centuries-old techniques. Through her work, she bridges the past and present, creating unique pieces that communicate her cultural identity.
Jade Chain Bangle: “Xiu Yu” Nephrite Jade
Kiah’s designs reflect her love for pop culture and bold aesthetics, combining classic jewellery elements with contemporary materials. She draws inspiration from films, TV shows, and nostalgic memories to create pieces that tell a story. Her process is playful yet thoughtful, always rooted in deeper meaning. For her graduate collection, “There’s No Place Like Mode,” she was inspired by Ugly Betty, incorporating its sets and characters into her designs. She creates for those who appreciate jewellery with a personal touch and a deeper connection.
The Manhattan Project: Recycled Plastic, Gold Plate with Cubic Zirconia
Joey Zhong sees jewellery as a form of storytelling. Her designs and process brings together an admiration of jewellery craftsmanship tradition and artistry with contemporary design principles and thinking. Her collections tell a personal narrative of diaspora following her family’s journey of migration where gemstones represent seeds that have been scattered and dispersed. She experiments with weaving and wrapping methods that hold gemstones. She uses donated opal offcuts chosen and collected by her parents from her home city of Sydney. She hand carves these gems to make precious a conventionally neglected material. As offcuts, fractures run throughout the stones. When carved and polished, they resemble relics from the past; seeds that are held and carried.
Woven Opal Cuff: Hand-carved orange opal off-cut, gilding metal, copper
Makila Nsika is a London based designer dedicated to enhancing the skills of her community in Congo while building a long-term, globally aligned jewellery vision.
Her love for literature, studied at Sorbonne University, informs her practice: she thinks carefully about the analogies between the components she is working with, their social and environmental context. Her final work for the MA Design at Central Saint Martins was twice awarded (Maison/0 green trail and Graduate Award)
Necklace: Palm Nut kernels and gold plated recycled silver
Estelle Burton is a contemporary jewellery designer and metalsmith with a fascination for glass. Having recently completed a research-based Design Masers at Central Saint Martins, she spends her time working in collaboration with teams of scientists, engineers and highly skilled scientific glass workers. Using a unique blend of industrial and traditional jewellery processes, Estelle brings together different disciplines to breathe new life into salvaged optics and novel materials. Subverting processes to create opportunities for collaboration and question ideas of value where new forms and structures are made possible using super-strong 'technical' glasses to maximise play with light, colour and shadow on the skin of the wearer.
Skylon Diadem: Borosilicate glass, iron, recycled silver, 24ct gold vermeil, lab grown ruby Hand fabricated head-piece comprising of salvaged precision engineered scientific glass optical waste.
Highly Commended 2024
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Chris Lewis
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Dermot Fowler
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Hannah Schofield
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Qinyu Zheng
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Rachael Plassard
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Siri Hansen
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Xinyi Yuan
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Yutong Liu
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Yuqian Ma
Ones To Watch 2024
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Cindy (Xinyi) Wu
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Clare Maiden
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Imogen Slack
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Matilda Press
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Milton Stavro
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Mischa Maclean
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Olivia Nash
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Xuan Xu
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Youjin Seo