Studio V A N C O X - Fine Jewelry Design and Life Style

It's been a while since Marcelle Lawson-Smith went to study in London. She has since got married, settled, moved house and changed profession. Graphic design was little by little substituted with accessories as beautiful as they are unusual. Marcelle has produced several collections as part of her collaborative relationship with fashion designer Ronaldo Fraga, a friend from her home state of Minas Gerais. Some of these pieces, which she continues to manufacture and sell in Fraga's stores, are made in stainless steel. Now Marcelle has just moved things on again: her bracelets, necklaces and rings inspired by the cane-work of chairs are now produced in gold and sold in Brazil through Vancox. The collection takes the home as its' inspiration: there are also the flowers which adorn the venetian mirrors and the swallows so often used on walls in the 1960's - and in the skies above Rio de Janeiro, the city associated with the decade of Bossa Nova and singer Nara Leao. "I want to create a soul through each collection" she says, "where each piece tells a story." Her label has just launched in Harvey Nichols and will soon be in Selfridges, two of London's leading shops. Great stories always find a great public to listen to them.

www.marcellelawson-smith.com

Gilsimara Oliveira

Jewelry designer

I started working in the jewellery industry after graduating in Product Design at UEMG (Universidade Estadual de Minas Gerais). I discovered they offered a major in Jewellery Design and found out they even had a graduate school on the subject as well. That was when I really got interested. So I decided to move from Bahia to come to the state of Minas Gerais to study. In my early days I didn't know the Jewellery Design course existed and that it could also enable me to design accessories and watches; but I liked to imagine. During the time I was taking the college entrance exams, I began reading and discovering about product design and that I could also design accessories through the same course.

At the beginning of my career, I interned at the Nucleo de Estudos de Design de Gemas and Jóias of the UEMG, where I had a small contact with stone-cutting and started to enter in the prototyping world, making models in 3D using the Rhino program and also working on jewelry prototyping. While still in college I got an internship here in Vancox which has developed into a full time position today.

The people who inspire me the most are my co-workers Lígia, Ana and Emi, who is no longer working with us. She has helped me a lot and I thank her for that. I have always also admired the work of Wanda Gontijo, as well as the one of other jewelleries such as Carrera and Carrera and Van Cleef...

Though tempting, the offer of fresh, hot pão de queijo and a cup of jasmine tea on a grim English morning wasn't even necessary to lure me to view London-based Brazilian designer Marcelle Lawson-Smith's new jewelry collections. Having already seen her designs on the São Paulo catwalks, accessorizing much-loved designer Ronaldo Fraga's esoteric collections, I was curious enough already to get a first glimpse of her new fashion pieces and the designs for high-end Brazilian jeweler Vancox, all debuting in the UK.



The most covetable items in the Vancox collection are the golden Tree of Life brooches and necklaces, whose stylized branches are hung with fruity-colored, semi-precious stones and diamonds. For her other collection, Marcelle produced printed stainless steel collars, animal totems, printed flower chains, and swallow necklaces. Her approach is anything but predictable (she married her English husband at a self-designed warehouse party in her conservative hometown, wearing a transparent plastic bodice). And the accolades for her offbeat style are mounting—her printed stainless steel and porcelain pieces, inspired by a visit to China, have found a place at the Design Museum in London, at the current Designs of the Year exhibition.