MOVERS & SHAKERS
Our clients love the story of the making process almost as much as they love the story behind their own jewellery.” Resetting stones and creating new jewellery from old pieces is another aspect of the business that Harriet loves. “It’s glamorous recycling,” she grins. “We do a lot of that – people come in all the time with jewellery they’ve inherited, or something they just don’t like anymore. There’s a story I often tell about a girl who came in with a pile of awful, horrid, cheap nine-carat gold jewellery – a lot of gold – and she said: ‘These are all the presents that my lying, cheating bastard of a boyfriend bought me, and I want you to melt them down while I watch.’ Okay – so we did that!” Harriet laughs. “We made this really chunky dress ring with Roman numerals of her birth date, symbolising that she could make her own decisions. And then she came back a couple of years later with the right bloke, and we made her a beautiful big diamond engagement ring, and a wedding ring – and she’s very happy. It’s all good. But it was very funny and yes, sometimes redesigning jewellery really does feel like therapy.” As well as overseeing her three stores, Harriet is currently chair of the National Association of Jewellers, the main trade association for professional jewellers working in the UK, and has been involved for nearly nine years – becoming the first female chair almost two years ago. Harriet is also a non-executive director on the British Hallmarking Council, an executive non- departmental public body involved in enforcing hallmarking law, maintaining
Even though I’d been making jewellery as well, I was quite aware of technology and quite ‘techy’ – so when I set out, even back in 1996, I had a website"
being number one on the search for engagement rings to being on page 68 for engagement rings – and I suddenly thought, ‘Bloody hell – you know – here we are completely with all our eggs in one basket’.” Despite Harriet Kelsall having had a website before Google even existed, the business’s success was completely at the search engine’s mercy. “We realised we needed bricks and mortar, because we needed passing trade – but we also wanted to stay optimised in an important centre.” Harriet and her team had noticed quite a few customers were from Cambridge, and at the time it felt more financially achievable than setting up in London. “So we opened this store on Green Street as a way of making sure that we didn’t have all our eggs in that basket – and we’re so glad we did,” says Harriet. The variety of creative challenges presented by her Cambridge clients is what excites Harriet and her team about the location. “It’s such an exciting place to have a shop – you never know who’s going to come in the door,” she says. “You have scientists coming in saying they want something that’s inspired by DNA, or some amazing technical concept that we have to try and get our heads round – and then in the next minute, we’ve somebody who wants that ring to be inspired by magic, or something very natural – it’s fascinating.”
Over the past 15 years working with locals to create their own bespoke engagement rings and pieces of jewellery, the designers have noticed a bit of a trend. “We’ve found that people in Cambridge very much embrace stories, and the symbolism that’s behind designs,” Harriet explains. “They tend to think quite a lot, and be interested in the process, and how we’re doing what we’re doing by hand – we draw our designs by hand here, which is unusual – and we also make photo books of the process of the jewellery being made.
ABOVE Harriet enjoys thevariety ofcreative challenges presentedby Cambridgeclients, from technical concepts tonature- inspireddesigns
ISSUE 06 48
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