I wanted to talk about places that echo within us after we’ve left them. Not always as clear memories or images, but as something harder to name. Maybe it’s the atmosphere or felt presence lingering in the body, maybe it’s the arc of memories the place conjures, and maybe it’s the utter beauty of a place that changes us for the better.
Philosophers and landscape theorists call this genius loci – the spirit of place. It’s an old term, originating in ancient Roman belief, where genius loci referred to the protective spirit inhabiting a place. Today it’s more broadly understood as the intangible quality that gives a place its character – its atmosphere, its way of being felt. We tend to recognise this intuitively. A place can feel grounding, expansive, or unsettling, often without any obvious reason. That response isn’t purely visual. It moves through the body.
In my work as a jewellery designer and maker, I’m really drawn to this idea: how might these experiences of place be translated into wearable form? Not as literal representations, but as material responses to memory and sensation. That embodied sense of place is what keeps my mind and hands busy.
From Place to Material
Photographs and language can feel insufficient to me. They show and describe, but they don’t quite hold the emotional weight of an experience. Jewellery offers something different. It’s tactile, intimate, worn close to the body.
In translating place into material, I often begin with colour and association, particularly through gemstones and metal surfaces. The right sapphire can somehow match the emotional tone of a place. A deep teal stone might hold the memory of a high-altitude lake. A soft green might suggest distance, or water, or something mineral and old.
These aren’t literal translations, they’re intuitive responses. A way of letting material evoke rather than describe.
In my series I Was Just Here, I explore this through pieces shaped by personal experiences of place. The Isla del Sol Ring holds a teal cushion-cut sapphire referencing Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, its colour, its elevation, the quality of the light there. A stylised outline of the island runs around the bezel, with small diamond reference points. Other works use layered enamel and textured silver to build surfaces that act as carriers of memory, open, I hope, to the wearer’s own interpretation. Each piece is a kind of encoded response. Shaped by a specific experience but not closed to others.
Why Jewellery Can Hold a Place
Unlike objects that sit in a room, jewellery moves with the body. It exists in relationship with touch and gesture. This makes it well suited to holding personal meaning, particularly meaning rooted in place.
Worn close, a piece can act as a reminder of an experience, a felt reference point rather than a souvenir. In this way, I think jewellery can become more than adornment. It can become a form of material memory.
Place, Memory, and the Body
I don’t think we ever fully leave the places that matter to us. They linger in us – sinewy and persistent, working their way in to our bodies and minds, always just below the surface.
Through jewellery, I’m interested in how these traces of place might be given form. Not as monuments, but as acknowledgements. A way of honouring the experience of having been somewhere that moved us.
At its heart, this work is about attention. To place, to sensation, and to the way we’re shaped by where we’ve been. If you’ve ever felt that resonance in a particular place, I hope this work offers a way of thinking about it, and perhaps of holding it.
