-
Form that holds wonder.
Precision and imagination are not opposites.
The most radical gesture belongs to the person who knows the rules completely enough to depart from them. Every piece is a fight. Between perfection and play. Between the adult who judges and the imagination that subverts - sometimes a little, sometimes completely.
The starting point varies: a painting, a broken object, a question about scale. What is consistent is what happens after: obsessive testing against material reality until what remains is true. The object is not the idea. The object is what the idea looks like when it has survived.
This is jewellery for those who collect ideas.
Charelle Smith trained at the British Academy of Jewellery, and in 2017 was awarded the Gold Award at the Assay Office's Make Your Mark Awards - including a placement within the design team at House of Garrard, the London jeweller founded in 1735 and Crown Jewellers to the British monarchy for over a century.
Inside that density of tradition, rule, and royal design language, something clarified. Not a desire to escape it - a recognition that you can only depart from what you have completely understood.
She went on to see every stage of production working in a workshop environment in Hertfordshire: mounting, casting, finishing, stone setting. The discipline accumulated. So did the instinct to use it differently.
Elle Duende is the practice that followed.
All pieces are produced through specialist workshops in Hatton Garden - London's jewellery quarter, where the techniques have been refined across centuries of making.
Materials are chosen with the same deliberateness as form. 18K recycled gold. Diamonds sourced from partners audited by the Responsible Jewellery Council. Sterling silver for selected works.
What something is made from is part of what it means.