Newcomer Gemma O’Leary of Inner Island Jewellery talks us through the spirit and skill behind her complex yet deceptively simple collections of fine jewellery with an elegant edge.
What inspired you to launch Inner Island Jewellery?
How I came to launch Inner Island was that I have always been creative, but I never figured out exactly what medium I wanted to use. It wasn’t until I did an evening course in NCAD and some metalwork training that I became hooked on silver as a medium. I’m not the most graceful a person – I tend to always be dropping things all the time, banging into things *[laughs]*. So metal is the medium for me because you can be really rough with it, you can make mistakes and get it wrong and if you don’t like what you have done you can melt it down and start again. It’s very forgiving! After the NCAD evening course I was 100% sure that this is what I wanted to do, so I did a FÁS course, Jewellery Design and Manufacturing. Unfortunately the course isn’t there any longer, but through that I got an internship with a jeweller called Mette O’Connor from AMOC Jewellery in Greystones and I spent two years with her. She taught me so much and gave me the space to make my mistakes and carve out my craft. After I left her I started working with another jeweller called Aliquo and I learned a lot of the business side of things there, and I got a multi-faceted understanding of what it took to launch a jewellery line. I wanted to show the world what my view of what jewellery could be.
How do you come up with your designs? And what materials do you predominantly work with?
Mainly I am inspired by history, the people that have come before us fascinate me, especially the craftspeople and what they did with what tools they had. For instance the Quaintrelle collection is inspired by Neolithic weapons. I love the shapes of the weapons that they used and I wanted to bring that to a modern audience by making it more contemporary. I used the shapes but simplified it – the pieces still have that element of danger which I think is important. The Duende collection is based on a game called Pick-up Sticks where you have a pile of sticks and you have to pick up one without moving the others. It’s a really old game, they used sticks made of different things like bone and reed, and even shells. It’s a really simple game but it inspired me to add more drama. I took the simple stick shape and moulded it to the body, so I wrapped it around to make a bangle or I texturised it to give it more interest but at the end of the day it’s a simple shape.
I love silver, that’s what all of my pieces are made of, and I use an 18 karat gold plate on the silver. I also use this plate called black rhodium plate which is a member of the platinum family – it’s a very hard plate which is more commonly used in the colour white for platinum rings, so it’s an interesting colour because it has a kind of black-grey colour which is very shiny. I also use black diamonds and freshwater pearls. I’m looking to include gemstones in the future but am trying to find the best ethically-sourced gemstones first. Everything is made by me in-studio in Dublin, it’s not made out at some big factory, so a lot of care and attention is put into each piece.
Do you have a philosophy that you design by?
Inner Island, the name is from a song by El Perro del Mar. It’s a beautiful song and to me the lyrics are about how we all have our own individual sense of style, and that we should nourish that sense of style and not cast it away. Like an island we can be influenced by everyone around us but we still have our own sense of self, so that is kind of the ethos of Inner Island Jewellery. The jewellery is there to complement the wearer not to dominate the wearer so it’s got a complex simplicity to it. Although the jewellery is made with graphic shapes and interesting textures it still has a lightness and a delicacy to it. I look at each piece and ask whether each design detail needs to be there and if it doesn’t add anything to it I take it away, that is certainly my ethos in design.
Inner Island Jewellery is stocked at Atelier 27 on Drury Street, and at Seagreen stores in Ranelagh village and Monkstown. For more see www.innerisland.ie
Words: Honor Fitzsimons
