Georg Jensen is doing its first jewelry collaboration in 15 years with Australian-bred, New York-based jeweler, Jordan Askill.
The project came about when Askill was approached by Meeling Wong, Jensen’s president and managing director of jewelry for North America, to design a collection to represent the core history of the Danish brand and provide innovation going forward.
Askill, who is known for his elaborate nature themes, such as horses and birds that are articulated and depicted in multiples, was immediately drawn to Jensen product of the Art Nouveau period when the namesake designer also looked to nature themes. To that end the collection is based on a single theme: the butterfly — recreated and reinterpreted in sculptural neck collars, wrist cuffs and oversize rings among other pieces.
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“When I went to Denmark to visit the home where Georg Jensen was born on the river amongst nature, it was a connection that I responded to,” Askill told WWD. Also, in keeping with the company’s heritage, Askill referenced the distinct shapes and lines of Vivianna Torun’s designs for Jensen in the Seventies.
According to Wong, Askill also had a drive to “bring innovation” to the collection, a hallmark of Jensen’s history. The designer achieved this via 3-D printing, which allowed for the overlapping of many different butterfly species in a collar necklace, pieced together in a trail and morphing into a repetitive pattern for a look that he feels “will be recognizable 100 years from now.”
The overall effect is edgy, especially in the case of the black rhodium-plated silver group peppered with black diamonds or amethyst and blue topaz stones cut in an angular fashion as an ode to modernity. An 18-karat gold and diamond group rounds out the collection, offering a softer look, which according to Wong, is necessary as 50 percent of the brand’s sales at retail are gold.
The core silver collection will retail from $195 to $2,300; oxidized pieces with gemstones will range from $750 to $6,000, and the black rhodium group will be priced from $1,200 to $10,000. The collection is slated to launch in late August to coincide with the monarch butterfly migration that occurs annually in September. Georg Jensen last collaborated with Nina Koppel in 2000 on the Fusion Collection.