THE OTTOGANO COLLECTION

Back in 2020 I became fascinated with the variety of shaped mandrels (long spiky tools) that are used by jewellers to shape and size rings etc. The usual mandrel is round for shaping the usual ring shank (bit that goes around the finger), but you can get square, triangular, eliptical, hexagonal, octagonal and also sqaure ones with rounded corners, and that’s the one that fascinated me. I have always been drawn to materiality when I am creating and tools are a big part of that.

I have all these mandrels sitting in a draw and the round ones would come out regulalry, but it was not until late 2021 that I began playing with the sqaure ones with rounded corners. This lead to a lot of sketching and ideas to extend the basic shape, from adding texture to adding other elements, both in metal and also with gems.

I began with the idea of an engagement ring and making it very different from what you might find on the High Street. This lead to making simpler rings for wearing everyday and then adding pendants as well, this time tweaking the regular octagonal shape and adding additional elements that just would not have worked on a ring.