2 minute read
Ethical Jewelry That Changes Lives
from PARADOX
by WomanScape
By: Yara Zgheib
The oldest piece of jewelry in the world is 90,000 years old. Even back then, it was used as a symbol of status or rank.
Advertisement
Today: wealth. From shells, rocks, bones, wood, feathers, to precious and rare metals and stones, jewelry has evolved in sophistication, diversified in style and meaning, but its appeal remains universal:
Jewelry is beauty and value.
To Pippa Small, though, it is more: “Jewelry is a door opening into other lives.” It can empower and transform them.
The world-renowned designer creates unique pieces that dazzle in London, New York, L.A., and boost local economies in Mogok, Nairobi, Kabul.
Small works with women from disadvantaged communities around the world – Afghanistan, Burma, Myanmar, India, Kenya, Central, and South America. Using their traditional techniques and designs, and local, sustainably sourced materials, she and they craft bracelets, necklaces, and earrings that capture the souls of these places.
Diamonds, deep turquoise, fair mined gold, mother of pearl. Long before all of that, though, Pippa’s story began with plastic beads, string, seashells, and pebbles.
She grew up among artists and travelers and fell in love with art and travel. The cultures she encountered fed her growing collection of bracelets.
She strung more and more keepsakes on her arm as she studied medical anthropology and worked with human rights organizations in Borneo, Thailand, and India.
She learned about the people, their practices, and nature. She saw all three were disappearing. There had to be a way to preserve and honor this heritage. Pippa found it: jewelry.
In 2006, with Turquoise Mountain, an initiative founded by his Royal Highness Prince Charles and former President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, Pippa Small traveled to Kabul to seek young jewelry artisans.
With the goal of reviving Afghan crafts and the tattered economy, they created the first Pippa Small Turquoise Mountain collection.
Eleven years, eleven independent businesses, sixty-eight artisans, and 4,600 sold pieces later, the ateliers release two collections a year, in spite of the instability in this region.
Turquoise Mountain has since spread to Myanmar, where it works with local artists to capture the essence of Buddhist art in collections of flowing flowers.
In Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and soon with Syrian refugees, Pippa has been focusing on the revival of the craft of goldsmithery.
“Our projects give communities re-found respect for traditional design and a sense of self-confidence, pride in their creations and a path towards economic independence.”
“Ethical” jewelry values the artisan, the craft, and the material. The gold Pippa uses is sourced, for instance, from the first registered Fair Trade mine in Bolivia.
She has also worked with other Fair Trade groups in Africa and South America, bringing their creations into the luxury world and their history into the present.
“[Jewelry is] one of the few luxuries we have which are utterly pointless – you can’t drive it or eat it, it doesn’t keep you warm, and yet every culture in the world has created it since the stone age.” She calls it “emotional and primal,” this human connection to beauty.
Pippa has worked with the Batwa Pygmies in Rwanda, the Kuna in Panama, the slummers of Kibera in Kenya. In every place, she found inspiration.
“Luxury, hand-crafted, ethically sourced jewelry” that changes lives. That is her work, and she loves it. More than twenty years on, Pippa Small is still adding bracelets to her forearm.
